The Hollow Place
by Ninmub
Summary: TYKA. Kai doesn't take kindly to Tyson being kidnapped.
1. I

**Title**: The Hollow Place

**Fandom:** Beyblade

**Pairing:** Tyson/Kai

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings: **shounen-ai, violence, blah. the usual.

**Genre:** uh…action/adventure/romance/friendship/gen/rampant melodrama/god knows what else/i need sleep

**Disclaimer:** Beyblade and all associated terms, characters, etc. are not mine. no money is being made off this fic.

**Length:** 5 640

**Note: **no i don't know what the title means. my subconscious is presumably working on it. this story was begun something like two years ago in the dread days of my youth, and has now been salvaged for your somewhat dubious reading pleasure. enjoy.

* * *

"_Don't you dare touch him!"_

It's not something you can change.

"_Get out of the way! MOVE!"_

Your first impression of speed is when you are four years old and you are standing still and the seawater is streaming away around your feet back down the beach. The sea heaves and the plaster moon pulls and together they drag you away even though you are planted firmly in the wet sand. The sky has suddenly flipped around and transmuted itself into a sleek silver expanse of bitter water, and for a quicksilver moment you are aware of rush, of hurry, of a single tremendously vast motion crammed into one tiny second.

"_TYSON!_"

* * *

There were fireflies out on the hill that evening. The smoke from the bonfires had drifted up from the riverbank, mingling with the far-away scent of rain, and there would be thunder later on: the wind had already turned wet and cold after the day's black-amber heat.

Daichi gave a whoop. "Haha! Your puny powers can't beat mine! You suck!"

"What? No fair! And anyway, how come I always have to be the bad guy?" Tyson complained, waving a rather battered action figure around. "C'mon, Daichi, I wanna be the zombie-king this time!"

"Uh-uh-uh! Rules are rules," Daichi said, clutching the zombie king protectively. "Hey, how 'bout a rematch? Only this time the radioactive landslide gave me x-ray vision, so I can see you even when you use the Invisibility Belt! Ha!"

"…that's dumb, Daichi. X-ray vision doesn't mean you can see invisible stuff. Sheesh, that's dumb even for you."

"Yes, but x-ray vision means you can see bones! And normally you can't see bones, right, so that makes them invisible, so x-ray vision means you can see invisible stuff! Chief said so!"

"It doesn't work like that, you numbskull!"

Kai, lying in the grass nearby, glanced over at the two of them and gave a slight smirk. "You two having fun over there?"

Tyson narrowed his eyes at him haughtily, even though his heart was suddenly beating faster. "You got a problem with it?" he asked, as snootily as he could, and then winced mentally, because that was just a seriously lame comeback.

"Of course not," Kai said smoothly, still grinning a superior and rather unkind grin. "Don't let me interrupt your fun and games, now."

"Fine! We won't!" Tyson sniffed, and turned away to wince again, because that was just _lamer_ than lame. His vocabulary had this odd tendency to desert him whenever he spoke to Kai. He stared down at the grass, a few fireflies floating in front of him, and bit his lip, wondering if he should try to say something else. His heart gave a slight jump at the thought.

"Wooooo! I am the Lord of Eternal Night, king of the zombies! Wooooooo!" Daichi rammed his action figure headfirst into Tyson's. "Oi, loser, wake up! I'm kicking your butt over here!"

"Aw, cut it out, Daichi," Tyson said. "This is a stupid game."

"But I'm bored!" Daichi moaned. "You spoilsport."

Luckily, before an argument could break out, Max's voice floated up the hillside. "DAAAAI-CHIII! Yo! You up there?"

"I'm cooooooming!" Daichi called down. Then, turning to Tyson, he snatched up his action-figures and said, in an American drawl, "Eh…ya got lucky today, kid. I won't go so easy on ya next time, you hear? I'm a-watchin' ya, capisce?"

"Hey, who're you calling kid?" Tyson spluttered indignantly, but Daichi was already up and running down the hill. Tyson sighed, and called after him, "Hey! Daichi!"

"What is it now, loser?" Daichi yelled back, turning around and jogging on the spot.

"I'll see you later, OK?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

Tyson lolled back onto the rough grass, folding his arms behind his head and looking up at the clouds, shivering as a dark cold wind blew. Fireflies darted across his vision in a loose, incandescent cloud. He slapped at one, and was just wondering if he should risk saying something to Kai, when he heard Kai stand up. Tyson sat up abruptly, hoping that Kai wasn't leaving; but he needn't have worried. With his hands shoved nonchalantly into his pockets, Kai walked over to where Tyson was, and sat down cross-legged next to him, carefully avoiding any eye contact. Absently, he plucked a blade of grass and started splitting it down the middle, staring down the hill and over the dark river.

"Hey," Tyson said, quietly and somewhat breathlessly. He stared at Kai, whose face was masked by the deepening twilight. Fireflies drifted aimlessly around him, smooth-edged sparks of fire in the darkness.

"Hey," Kai said, still staring down at the piece of grass in his hand. Then he said, "Nice night."

"I dunno…it's kinda cold," Tyson said.

"It's almost winter."

"Yeah."

The riverbank below glowed with the lights and barbecue fires from the BBA party. Even though all the formal speeches and presentations were over, the rustle of voices could still be heard, and the faint clash of Beyblades echoed out across the black water of the river. Far-away thunder rippled across the night sky, and the wind blew again, bringing with it the scent of deep earth and silver rain.

Tyson picked a dandelion, its spangled white head glittering like the moon. He held it under Kai's nose and said, "Present for you, courtesy of Tyson's delivery services."

"_This_ is a present?" Kai asked, scathingly, and then added, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, "Wow, gee, I guess it's the thought that counts."

Tyson gave him a shove on the shoulder. "What happened to your good mood?"

"I was in a good mood? My medication must need adjusting."

"Ohoho, Kai, don't try to hide it!" Tyson said, maliciously. "Come on, you actually acted like you didn't hate us today."

Kai fingered the dandelion's stem. He raised the fluffy head to his lips as though to blow at it, but then lowered it again, and said, quietly, "I've never hated you."

Tyson grinned lopsidedly, a strange, soft feeling of almost painful happiness catching in his throat. "Well, of course not!" he exclaimed, brightly. "I knew _that_! Deep down inside, you're just a big softie."

Kai looked at him, the fireflies whirling everywhere, and for a moment there seemed to be an expression of great peace and gentleness on his face, before he quickly raised one eyebrow and gave an amused, scornful smirk. "Excuse me?"

Tyson flushed under his gaze, and gave a quick laugh, and said, "Not like I care, or anything."

Tremors of bleak light fluttered across the low clouds at the very edge of the sky, and thunder rippled through the air again. Black grains of rain began to ping down like specks of fat in a pan, sweet and cool in the sandy heat of the night.

"Ack! Aw, the party's gonna be ruined," Tyson said, sadly, raising an arm over his head to shield himself as the rain grew heavier. "Brrrrr…hey, you're still staying the night at my place with the rest of us, right?"

"I guess." Kai stood up, moodily shoving his hands into his pockets again. He did it so that one almost couldn't tell that he had slipped the dandelion into his pocket; but Tyson saw, and clutched at the grass under his fingers as his heart kicked painfully in his chest. He grinned even with the cold rain plashing down his cheeks.

"What are you smiling about?" Kai asked, staring down at him apprehensively, guiltily, the rain slicking his hair to his pale face.

"Nothing!" Tyson said, leaping recklessly to his feet and bounding ahead, still grinning madly. "You coming or not? Or do you _want_ to get pneumonia or something?"

Kai hurried after him, falling into step beside him as they walked down the hill. By now the rain was harsh and metallic, the droplets bursting silver on the grey grass, but even though he was shivering violently in his thin red jacket, Tyson slowed his pace, lingering, and Kai stayed beside him.

* * *

"_They'll always be in your heart, you know."_

It's not something you can forget.

"_I need you with me. Please."_

Your whole life people have been leaving you behind. Your dad travelled and worked all the time, and your brother went off on his own, and your mom…well, yeah. Sometimes it makes you angry, but other times you know that it's your fault. You have to work so hard. You have to be the best friend in the world so that people won't leave you. You talk tough, and you know that your friends care about you and would do anything for you, and you _know_ that it's OK these days, but sometimes you get scared. Sometimes you freak out because you're scared that everyone's going to get better than you and forget about you again. Sometimes you worry that you won't be worthy.

It's dumb, yeah, but you can't help it.

There's one person who burns so brightly that you can't breathe when you look at him. There's one person you'd give anything to defeat. You want to be like him. You'd give _anything_ to make him happy, to make him safe. He was hurt really badly when he was a kid, and they screwed his head around and made him lonely, made him selfish. You can see how the shattered things inside him have lodged deep in the marrow of his bones, becoming inflamed and painful. You'd die if that would make the bad things go away. You really would. The one thing you have to be sure of is that he is safe, and the one thing you know is that he's special. He has this clear, pale light that shines out from deep down inside him: this silent, remorseless power radiating all around him.

He's your hero.

He acts like he can't even see you. He acts like he's off in his own cold, lonely world, like he's right and you're wrong and nothing's ever going to change that. You're only real if he chooses to acknowledge you. You've been trying to break through to him for years but the ice keeps freezing over again. He always leaves you alone and you can't stop him. He always goes away in the end.

* * *

It was still raining the next morning.

"Now what?" Tyson grumped. Still in his pyjamas, he wrapped himself in a blanket and sighed. "Brrrrr. Dumb rain."

"PILLOW FIGHT," Max said above the soft patter of the raindrops on the roof outside.

"Don't even think about it," Kai warned.

"Hehe…afraid you'll lose, Kai?" Tyson asked, cheering up marginally.

"To you? Don't make me laugh," Kai snorted, leaning against the wall of the big room where they had all camped out in their sleeping bags.

"Prove it, then," Tyson taunted. He threw off his blanket and grabbed a pillow from the closest futon, feinting left and right. "Come on, big guy, show me what you've got."

"Uh-oh, competition time again," Max said. "Do you two ever give it a rest?"

Daichi gave a loud snore from the corner. Tyson rolled his eyes, and chucked the pillow at the younger boy's head. "Yurgh," Daichi said, and rolled over, still snoring.

"OK, new idea: whoever manages to wake Daichi up first gets a medal," Tyson suggested. "Sheesh, how much sleep does one little runt need?"

"Look who's talking," Kai muttered.

"Yeah, what happened to the good old days when you slept, like, twelve hours minimum?" Max asked.

"I? I have matured," Tyson sniffed pompously. "And anyway I don't sleep _thaaat_ much, do I?"

"Please, Tyson. We used to have to drag you out of bed. And even then you carried on sleeping," Kai said.

"Remember that time we dumped him in the swimming pool at that hotel?" Max reminisced fondly, risking a grin at Kai.

Surprisingly, he got one back, even if it was slightly evil-looking. "That _was_ one of my better ideas," Kai agreed.

"Wait, wait, that was _your_ idea?" Tyson gasped. "Why, you sneaky son of a –"

"UP AND AT 'EM, MA DAWGS!" yelled a cracked old voice from the other side of the dojo. "BREAKFAST IS OOOOOON THE TABLE! COME AND GET IT!"

"Alright, I'm starving!" Max whooped, and leapt off his bed, rushing to the door. "Yo, Tyson, see if you can wake up Sleeping Beauty, will ya?"

"Easier said than done," Tyson grumbled as Max disappeared from the room. Annoyed, he strode over to Daichi's bed and poked him with a toe. Daichi didn't move. Tyson poked him harder. Stupid kid. "Hey, brat. Get up."

"Need…sleeeeeeeeep," Daichi moaned, yawning widely. "Can't…go…much farther…aargh, go on without me, you guys! I'm a goner!"

"C'mon, you moron, you're making us miss breakfast," Tyson said.

"Huh? Breakfast?" Daichi exclaimed, sitting up immediately. "Well, why didn't you _say_ so? Woohoo! Food!"

"Oh, great. I think I liked you better when you were asleep."

"No, don't tell me Max got there first!" Daichi gasped, jumping out of bed and rushing from the room. "Max! Wait up! Save some for me!"

"Dumb kid," Tyson muttered, running a hand through his sleep-rumpled hair and only managing to mess it up more. Then he gave a yelp as what felt an awful lot like a pillow hit the back of his head. He turned around indignantly, only to see Kai looking determinedly into the distance, his lips folded together as though he were trying not to laugh. "Did you just throw that at me?" Tyson demanded, stalking across the room to stand accusingly in front of Kai.

"Maybe," Kai said, the corners of his mouth twitching a little. His eyes glittered wickedly as they met Tyson's, and then suddenly he gave him an open smile, and laughed. "You wanted a pillow fight, didn't you?" he asked, softly.

"You…you jerk," Tyson spluttered, suddenly feeling a little awkward, almost trapped, with Kai looking at him like that. "You…know what this means, right?"

"No. Tell me."

"I'm gonna – I'm – gonna – um…um…" Great, his vocabulary had given up entirely. "I'm gonna have to get you back," he said, finally.

"Is that so?"

"Yeah," Tyson hazarded. "Uh, it, it is so. It is very, very so."

"Your mastery of language astounds me."

Tyson flushed. "Well, your mastery of being a jerk astounds me!"

"Such an original mind, too. Such pithy comebacks." Kai grinned. "A lesser man would fall to such wit."

"How about you fall to this?" Tyson yelled frantically, and, snatching up a pillow from the floor, swung it straight at Kai.

Kai ducked, Tyson overshot, and a loud _thump!_ was heard as a certain rather tender portion of a certain young Beyblader's anatomy hit the floor, hard.

"Not funny," Tyson gritted out, rubbing his behind gingerly. "_Really_ not funny."

"From where I'm standing it is." Kai smirked down at him. "Pathetic also comes to mind."

From the kitchen, echoing down the hallways: "OI, T-MEISTER! GRUB WAITS FOR NO MAN!"

"Urgh. Gimme a hand?" Tyson groaned.

"I don't think so," Kai said, and strode away. "Better hurry up."

Tyson scrambled to his feet and dashed after Kai. Perhaps it was the fact that he was so hungry he couldn't think straight, or perhaps it was just hormones, but whatever the cause, Tyson found himself brave enough to sling his arm around Kai's shoulders with such vigour that he almost toppled both of them over. "Stick 'em up! Woohoo!"

"Get off me, moron," Kai snapped. His shoulders were stiff under Tyson's arm, but his skin was warm. Tyson always half-expected him to be cold, or else somehow inanimate, somehow unreal or unreachable, but he wasn't. He moved with each breath and smelled of soap and sleep and was as solid and heavy as anyone else. "The hell's your problem?"

"No one calls _me_ pathetic and gets away with it," Tyson explained, trying valiantly but failing nevertheless to get Kai in a headlock. "Hey, hold still, you jerk! How'm I s'posed to teach you a lesson if you keep – gaack!"

Tyson wasn't entirely sure what happened, but before he could think, Kai had reversed the hold and had Tyson firmly in a half-nelson. His chest was pressed up against Tyson's back, and his lips moved against the fine hairs of Tyson's neck when he spoke; _entirely_ coincidentally, Tyson found himself with a bad case of goosebumps. "I call 'em as I see 'em," Kai said. "Pathetic."

If he turned his head even the littlest bit, they would be eye-to-eye: too close together for gravity not to take over, too close to be resisted. "I can kick your ass in kendo."

"No, you can't."

"Oh, _right_? Let me go and you will be sorrier than you've ever been in your life, you big loudmouthed creep."

"That's exactly why you can't," Kai said. His breath was very warm on Tyson's skin, dry and sharp. Tyson entertained the horrific notion that Kai's proximity meant that he could somehow feel his heartbeat, which was far too fast. "I'm not going to let you go."

"Stalker," Tyson muttered.

"You wish."

With no warning, Kai released him and strode out of the room. Tyson shivered in the sudden cold, and for a moment his stomach twisted in disappointment. He stooped to pick up his cap, which had fallen to the floor in the tussle, and wondered why Kai seemed so different of late.

* * *

Teasing. That was it. Kai was willing to play along, to snark, to offer up insults as good-natured banter. He had been staying at the dojo for several weeks, before Daichi and Ray and Max had arrived, and had spent the better part of the winter in Tyson and Kenny's company. Just the three of them, often talking beyblades from breakfast through to dinner; and at night, Tyson would creep into the spare room and perch cross-legged at the foot of Kai's futon, and they would go on arguing about weight ratios and technique and spin speed, comparing this blader to that and debating which strengths would prevail, which weaknesses would be shown up.

"Man, one day I gotta see Ray against Garland. They're so similar, you know: they plan it all out so perfectly. It'd be like watching Beyblade chess or something."

"Ray's learned to improvise over the years, though. I don't think Garland could improvise if his life depended on it."

"That's just making an assumption. You ever blade against him? I mean properly? He has enough confidence in himself to freestyle if he has to."

"I didn't say freestyle, I said improvise. And personally I don't think Garland could freestyle, either. Freestyle's what we were doing the day before yesterday, you remember? Not thinking, just – you know. Letting it happen."

"Oh, I get what you mean. Heh, now _that_ was awesome. I never thought that was a whole different technique, though – I thought that was just having fun. But it's probably only really effective if you know your opponent. If I tried it against, say, Tala or someone – hell, even against Ray – I'd get crushed in two seconds flat. I'm so used to you, that's why it works." He grinned, and poked Kai's foot with a toe. "Even if you pull something sneaky, I can see it coming. I'm onto you, buster."

"That's one reason I'm not staying on with you," Kai said, very matter-of-factly. "I need something new. Knowing you this well is an advantage for me, but it also means that you know me, and I can't beat you that way."

There was a little quietness in the room at that, until Tyson said, as though it didn't matter, "You and me – we'd make one awesome tag team."

"We'd be too good," Kai agreed, and something about his voice made Tyson absolutely certain that he was smiling, even if only a little. "No one would even begin to challenge us."

"There's the twins. They're the best tag teamers I've ever seen. I still don't know how Daichi and me pulled that one off. Raoul wasn't at the top of his game, I guess."

"We'd be better than them," – dismissively; and then, almost gently – "One day: maybe. As a training exercise, of course."

It was that gentleness, that almost imperceptible lowering of some barrier, that had made for the change in Kai. Sometimes Tyson even noticed it around Kenny, and once or twice, when they arrived, with the others – but only occasionally.

"It's disgusting," Tala said to Tyson, on a visit, as they watched Kai and Max going through the preliminary motions of an exercise in agility, which was still Max's weak point – feinting and dodging, side to side. "He acts like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tyson snapped, riled. "The fact that he doesn't rust up when it rains, like you do?"

"He's _smiling_."

"You got a problem with that?"

"He never used to smile. He used to smirk. There's a difference."

"Oh, please," Tyson scoffed. "He smiles plenty. Granted, they're more like facial tics than actual smiles, but still. Sheesh, how come all you Russian dudes are such grouches? You're even worse than he is."

It was that weightlessness when they watched each other from across the beydish – or, more often than not, from opposite side of the garden, or from opposite banks of the river, where they had taken to attempting water matches, just for the fun of the challenge (though Kenny complained about rust) – that suspended and independent stillness in the midst of motion, that tiny buoyant slipslick miracle that fled and was lost in the instant that it was discovered. It was the growing softness in Kai's face, a softness that would never even begin to dispel the distance that still lived in his eyes, but that served somehow to make him almost complacent at times, almost relaxed, almost – gentle.

And for Tyson, it was the assurance of Kai's continued and undeniable failure to be anywhere else but where Tyson himself was.

Which was the only thing he had ever really wanted.

* * *

After breakfast, which didn't involve many vitamins or minerals, but which did involve a large amount of American-style waffles, an even larger amount of syrup, and more than one mini-food-fight, Gramps suggested that they take a walk. "Ahhhh, fresh air!" he sighed, flinging open the front door and nudging Tyson and Max out of it. "Yupyupyup, just the thing for you young adolescent-type dudes! Now that you're growin' up, you gotta get _exercise_!"

"Gramps, I'm practically the greatest beyblader who ever lived! Like I _don't_ get enough exercise already," Tyson complained.

"Exercise? _You?_ You mean the fact that you're a world-class channel surfer, I take it?" Kai remarked from inside.

"You too, Kai-man!" Gramps said, chivvying Kai out of the door. "Go on with ya now! Run wild and free like young mustangs through the streets of the city!"

"But it's _raining_!" Max and Tyson wailed together.

"Rain? Rain? Holy guacamole, kidsters, you call this _rain_? When I was a bright young thing I ate rain like this for breakfast! This ain't got enough rain-juju to whip a _real_ rainstorm's little sister at hopscotch! Now come on, sprouts! _March_, two three four! _March_, two three four!"

They marched.

"At least it's only kinda sorta drizzling now," Max remarked, optimistically. The sky was silver, and the sun shone pale through the low blanket of cloud. The trees all around were for the most part bare, although some crumpled golden leaves still clung to the lattice of dark branches here and there.

"Hmpf. It's still rain," Tyson muttered, his arms folded behind his head as he trudged along the wet sidewalk, his shoes crunching on the sodden dead leaves that lay everywhere. "Doesn't this count as child abuse? Kicking us out to the mercy of the elements? Abandoning us on the street like…like…like _yesterday's pizza_?"

"Get over yourself," Kai advised.

"Ahhh, Gramps is just trying to get us out of the house," Tyson concluded knowingly, trying to ignore Kai. "He's expecting his _girlfriend_ to call, I bet."

"His _girlfriend_?" Max yelped. "Oh, please tell me you're kidding."

"Nope," Tyson sighed. "You know that nice old lady who runs the sweetshop around the block?"

"Whoa," Max said, chuckling. "Hehe…hot date."

"It's not funny!" Tyson yelled, waving his arms wildly. "He's been writing poetry! My grandpa has been writing _poetry_! It's a _nightmare_!"

"What does adolescent mean?" Daichi enquired, breaking into the conversation. When no one answered him, he stepped on Max's foot. "Oi, Max! I _said_ what does adolescent mean?"

"Ow! Daichi, that hurt!"

"Then tell me what it means!"

"You could've asked nicely," Max sulked.

"I _did_! Only you guys didn't _listen_!"

"We don't have time to listen to losers like you," Tyson said, sticking his nose in the air. "Buzz off, Daichi."

"Hey! I am _not_ a loser! I _flattened_ you the other day! I beat you _two out of three_ rounds! Who's the loser now?"

"He has a point there," Kai said. He was walking beside Tyson, and gave him a slight nudge with his shoulder, something he'd never done before. He caught Tyson's gaze for a moment, and gave him a teasing smirk. "That was the most pathetic blading I've seen since we coached those first-graders in July."

"See? See? Even _Kai_ agrees with me!" Daichi crowed. "Uh…hey, what were we even talking about?"

"Kai's a jerk, that's what we were talking about," Tyson muttered, glaring at Kai, who looked away and stuck his hands in his pockets as though he couldn't care less what Tyson thought of him. Tyson gazed at him, biting his lip in a confusion of anger and longing, and then gave a loud, "Hmpf!" and looked away too, walking ahead quickly.

"Wow, puddles! Alright!" Max whooped, catching sight of several wide puddles of rainwater that lay spread out across the sidewalk, their pale surfaces shimmering slightly under the fine drizzle. He kicked at one enthusiastically, sending murky droplets tumbling through the air so that they glittered when the silver light caught them. "Hey, come on, you guys! Don't you just love these?"

"Hey, yeah!" Tyson said, apparently forgetting about Kai. He stopped, took aim, and leapt squarely into another puddle, the muddy water splashing everywhere.

"Ha, bet I can splash bigger than you can," Max challenged him, giving him a shove on the shoulder.

"No _way_," Tyson grinned. "Maxie, you are dead meat."

"Hey! Hey! Me too!" Daichi yelled, leaping into a huge puddle and splashing Tyson's legs. "Haha! Chew on _that_, suckers!"

"Why, you little – hey, get back here!" Tyson yelled as Daichi danced on ahead, kicking at puddle after puddle. "Dumb kid! These are my favourite jeans! Now they're all wet!"

"Too bad, Frogman," Kai said, sauntering past Tyson and Max and strolling on calmly down the road.

"Oh – oh, yeah?" Tyson called after him. "Well, I bet you can't beat me at jumping in puddles!" Then smacked his hand to his forehead. _Lame_…

"I'll try not to let that depress me too much," Kai answered smoothly, walking on.

"Ouch," Tyson whispered, his face burning. "Urgh, that was so embarrassing…"

"Tyson, are you blushing?" Max enquired. "Wow…your Kai thing must be worse than I thought. Well, alright, that _was_ a pretty lame thing to say, but still…"

"_How_ many times, Maxie? I do _not_ have a thing for Kai!" Tyson yelled, infuriated.

Ahead of them, Kai started, turned his head back the barest inch, and then hurriedly turned around again, straightening his shoulders.

Tyson moaned. "I'm gonna kill you, Maxie," he muttered. Had Kai really heard that? No way. No _way_. That was just too embarrassing to happen. He clenched his teeth, willing his heart to stop beating so fast. "Has he stopped looking?"

Max didn't answer for a moment; and then he shouted, "Daichi!" and started to run. Tyson glanced down to the end of the street, to the corner where one road turned into another, and saw Daichi, flat on his face on the ground –

He started to run flat-out, sprinting towards Daichi. Kai and Max were already kneeling on the ground beside him when Tyson caught up, and Max had turned him onto his back, and was feeling at his wrist for a pulse. "He's OK," Max said, breathing hard. "He's alive."

"What happened?" Tyson pressed, reaching out to shake Daichi's arm. "What's wrong with him? Did he fall or something?"

"I don't know, I just –"

"Sniper," Kai said, tersely. He reached out and plucked a thin hypodermic dart from the side of Daichi's leg. "Run."

There was a slight whizzing sound. Max said, "Unh –" and toppled over sideways, a dart embedded in his neck.

"Max!" Tyson yelped.

"Go!" Kai yelled, pulling him to his feet and shoving him backwards down the sidewalk so hard that he stumbled. "I'll look after them! You go! Get help!"

Tyson steadied himself, his breathing hoarse. His chest was starting to hurt, and his blood was going like a drumbeat in his ears, too fast to be real, too painful to bear. "Are you _crazy_?" he shouted. "You think I'm just gonna leave?"

"Yes!" Kai hissed, gripping his arms with trembling hands and giving him a small shake. "Get help, you idiot!"

"No! OK? No!" Tyson snapped. "Why don't you go, huh?"

"You can't get hurt," Kai said, urgently, shaking him again. His breath was hot and harsh against Tyson's cheek. "Not you. Not now. Go."

Then the soft whizzing sound zinged through the air again, and Kai's eyes rolled back in his head as the dart hit him in the back of the neck. He gave a short, wheezing gasp, and collapsed into Tyson's arms. Tyson staggered under his weight for a moment, and then sank to the ground, Kai slumped heavy and boneless across his lap. Tyson had stopped breathing, his mind exploding with _what now_ and _help_ and _Kai please don't die don't die don't die_ and -

A voice said, "You are Tyson Granger?"

Shaking violently with both fear and rage, Tyson looked up, and saw a man standing in front of Max and Daichi's slumped forms: a pale-skinned, dark-haired man wearing an ordinary black business suit and mirrored shades. "Who wants to know?" Tyson grated out, slowly reaching for his shoulder holster with one hand, and fumbling for his launcher with the other.

"I'm a representative for BioVolt," the man said. "I should warn you that if you attempt to resist you will be sedated in the same way that your friends have been."

"You work for that Boris whacko?" Tyson asked, breathing hard and unconsciously clutching at Kai. "No way. No way. We got rid of you creeps. We beat you fair and square."

The man ignored him. "I have a business offer, Mr Granger," he said. "It involves the testing of –"

"You are _not_ getting your hands on Kai!" Tyson shouted furiously, whipping Dragoon from its holster and clicking it into place on his launcher, aiming it directly at the man's forehead. "Get out! Don't think you can come back and screw things up again! You get out of here!"

"We're not interested in Mr Hiwatari," the man said, and made a quick hand signal to someone Tyson couldn't see. "We're interested in you. Put that ridiculous excuse for a beyblade down and come with me; you won't need it in future. This is not optional. You will do as you are requested to do."

"Sorry, pal, but I'm gonna have to say 'no'," Tyson muttered. Gently, he laid Kai down on the ground, and then stood up, adding, "I don't work for crackpots." He pulled the ripcord, and yelled, "GO! Dragoon!"

The beyblade shot through the air, glinting in the cold light, a vortex of freezing wind beginning to spiral around it as it flew; but the man dodged effortlessly, and caught the beyblade in one gloved hand. He looked at it, raised an eyebrow behind his shades, and then said, "Very nice, Mr Granger. You are a first-class beyblader indeed. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though you are especially anxious to cooperate with us on this venture." He dropped the beyblade; it clattered to the sidewalk and lay there. Gritting his teeth, Tyson sank down to the wet sidewalk again, crouching next to Kai.

"What are you gonna do with my friends?" he asked, glancing down at Kai's blank face and feeling a twinge of panic. "You better not hurt them."

"Don't worry," the man said, shrugging. "It's generally a good rule not to rack up unnecessary murder charges. We're not interested in your friends; they're useless to us. You're the one we want. You're the only one who can wield Black Dragoon. Now, please, Mr Granger, if you'd accompany me to the car…"

"OK," Tyson said, standing up and walking towards the man, who placed a hand just below his shoulder and said,

"Excellent, Mr Granger. I'm sure that you won't regret choosing to work with us."

"Yeah, only I'm not gonna work with you!" Tyson said, and punched the man hard in the face. Fist connected with nose, and a loud crackling crunch resulted. The man toppled backwards, blood flying through the air in hot droplets, and Tyson took his chance and raced down the road, looking for – for an open garden where he could hide, or someone who would help him, or anything –

- and then he heard the soft zinging sound again, and there was a little _thump!_ against his back. A thick, buzzing whine filled his ears, and he felt his knees buckling. He had the odd feeling that his thoughts were pouring out from the back of his head in a slow stream of icy slush, and then his eyes closed even though he tried to hold them open, and things suddenly grew dark, and empty, and cold.

* * *

to be continued.

hypothetically.

thanks for reading this far, o ye fellow fangirls. now i must depart and pretend to study. yay matric.


	2. ii

**Title**: The Hollow Place

**Fandom:** Beyblade

**Pairing:** Tyson/Kai

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings: **shounen-ai, violence, blah. the usual.

**Disclaimer:** Beyblade and all associated terms, characters, etc. are not mine. no money is being made off this fic.

**Length:** 6 400

**Note: **if the style fluctuates wildly from chapter to chapter, it's mostly because some bits were written when i was fifteen, and others when i was seventeen. the fact that i faint dead away at the mere notion of editing might also be at least partially to blame. my apologies.

* * *

They were in the park. It was a bright morning, even though the wind was chilly. Hilary was swinging slowly back and forth on the swing set, her feet trailing along the ground. From far away, the wail of an ambulance echoed through the streets, and she winced as she heard it, hunching up tightly until it had faded.

Eventually she said, "Hey, so, um…have you guys spoken to Kai today?" She didn't say _yet_ or _recently_ or anything that would refer to what had happened eight days ago, because there was already a kind of self-defensive denial knitting itself together around the group of friends: a bone-cage of silence that was the only thing holding them up, the only thing keeping them from imploding.

"I've called him loads of times but he's not answering," Kenny said. He didn't take his eyes off his laptop's screen. Even that one sentence was practically a speech for him by his current standards. He had been entirely silent for the first two days, and then after that had spoken only a few tiny words every now and then.

"I went to his apartment yesterday," Max said, "and I think he was there, but he didn't answer the door or anything. Same old Kai," he added, grinning as though were making a joke. "Never talks to anyone!"

After an uncomfortable silence, Ray said, in a low, angry voice, "He blames himself."

"He shouldn't," Max answered in the same tone, all pretences of joking gone. "He's being selfish. He's so possessive about Tyson."

Hilary winced again at the name, but kept her eyes on the ground. "That's kinda mean, Maxie," she said, neutrally.

"I was there too, wasn't I?" Max asked. "If it's his fault then it's mine, too. He has – no _right_ to try and blame it all on himself."

"I don't understand you," Hilary sighed, trying to smile. "You boys are all crazy."

"Look, I'm just – I'm worried about Kai, OK?"

"We all are," Ray said. "I think – I think the first thing we need to do today is get him to talk to us. I haven't seen him since we were at the police station. At least Daichi's OK, but Kai –"

"Daichi's so brave," Hilary murmured softly. "He promised Gramps he'd do all Tyson's chores at the dojo. That dumb kid…" She shivered in the wind.

"– Kai is another story. You know him. Tyson's the only one who can even get him to act human most of the time. Without him – I mean…" Ray faltered, and then he stood up, his mouth set grimly. "How about we go check in on him right now?"

"And if he doesn't want to listen to us, I know how to make him," Kenny said, softly. Ray turned to him, and Max sat up from where he had been lolling on the ground. Kenny continued, blinking rapidly, his eyes still fixed on his laptop, his cheeks flushed pink at all the sudden attention: "The police couldn't track those darts, but I could. A couple years back Emily met a girl from Russia at some sports camp or something, and this girl – her dad's a defence attorney. Emily was telling me that he'd been involved in one of the cases against Voltaire, so I e-mailed her yesterday, and she got in touch with her friend again, and, well – OK, long story short, you guys – some of the evidence used against Voltaire involved the kinds of sedatives they were using on the kids at the Abbey, because technically speaking they were illegal. Maxie, you remember how you felt so bad after you woke up? You were pretty lucky; the side-effects of large doses can get really extreme. Brain damage, tissue damage, internal bleeding…"

"Chief?" Ray said, gently. "I really hope you're not gonna say what I think you're gonna say."

"I think I am," Kenny said, his voice growing even quieter. "I hacked the district forensics lab's computer; whoever took Tyson was using the same sedatives the Abbey used to. And I know that's not much to go on, but there's more, and, well, it gets a lot worse."

"Tell us," Ray said, still speaking very gently, although his shoulders were slumped and he was clenching his teeth dangerously.

Kenny swallowed hard. "Way back, just after the whole Black Dranzer fiasco, I hacked the BioVolt computers. By the time I got in Voltaire had already been arrested, and I guess that the guys at BioVolt were trying to destroy all the Abbey's records in case they could be used as evidence, because a lot of the data was corrupted, but – I found plans. They were just drafts, basically, and a couple of weight ratios - diagrams for the construction of Beyblades. Black Dragoon. Black Draceil. Black Driger. I – well, after that, I always figured that if BioVolt were to somehow get a kick-start again, we'd be the first people they came after."

"Oh, man," Max said. "I mean, I knew Boris was still out there, but after the whole BEGA thing I thought he'd given up."

"Boris?" Hilary whispered. "Chief, you need to tell Mr Dickinson. The police – this could help them."

"I e-mailed Mr Dickinson yesterday," Kenny said, blankly. "He passed the information on. But – it's nothing new, you know. Apparently Boris has been suspected of a couple of other kidnappings – also bladers, not as prominent or as powerful as Tyson, but still pretty famous in their own circles, and really talented. Brooklyn's been missing for a while – they kept it quiet, but it's true. Johnny from the Majestics is gone, too, as well as Oliver. Tyson…Tyson is just the latest victim."

There was a silence. Then Ray said, "If they've developed Black Driger and Black Draceil, why didn't they take Maxie? Why didn't they come after me?"

"Black Dragoon was the only one they'd really designed prototypes for," Kenny explained. "The other two were just theoretical. If they've managed to successfully create any of them by now, it'll be Black Dragoon. It was the closest to completion back then."

"But don't you guys see? This is good!" Max said, excitedly, getting to his feet. "Now we know Tyson's OK! They obviously took him because they need him to control Black Dragoon! They've gotta be treating him well if he's so important! And plus – now we know who to look for! Alright, Chief! Way to use your head!"

"It's just a start, Max," Kenny said, looking very small. "Oh…I shouldn't have told you. Now you're all happy, but what if they can't find him? You guys, this is a corporate kidnapping. It was perfectly orchestrated, perfectly executed. Boris knows what he's doing. You mustn't – you mustn't think that this means that anything good is going to happen. We still have nothing."

"You don't have to talk like that," Max insisted. "Come on, we gotta tell Kai." He looked to Ray. "Come on. We need to visit him anyway."

Ray gave a soft sigh, nodded tiredly. "Alright," he said, and then tried to sound more optimistic. "Let's go cheer up Kai." He grinned lamely. "If it's even possible for the guy to _be_ cheerful."

"Sure it is," Hilary said, with a scared, crooked smile. "Miracles happen."

Kenny said nothing.

* * *

Kai was sitting in a corner.

His head was ringing, and his lungs felt rather as though someone had filled them with a nasty mixture of sand and broken glass. He hadn't slept in nearly thirty-two hours, and hadn't eaten for longer, but he wasn't thinking about that kind of thing. He had reached a kind of deadlock; his programming seemed to have jammed. When someone took something from you, you went and you got it back – but that didn't work now, because he didn't know where to look. It was like a missing rung on a ladder, it was like –

- like years ago, when he had first met Tyson, when he had suddenly realised that something was missing deep down inside himself. Tyson had made him see things so clearly, and suddenly all he had needed was to be like him, was to be better than him, because somehow Kai had known instinctively that the missing part was in Tyson -

- only this time _he didn't know where to look_, and this time it wasn't metaphorical: this time something really was missing, and it was the most important thing, the only thing that mattered.

_Do you want power, boy?_

He should probably go and talk to Kenny.

Tyson would want would him to talk to Kenny. Kenny was probably freaking out, and Tyson wouldn't want that.

If Kai had been braver, he would have gone and talked to Kenny.

Kai wasn't brave. Not in the way that Tyson was brave. Kai wasn't anything compared to Tyson, not anymore.

_Do you want that power? That power that will make the world your own? You can make people think what you want them to think, you can prove that you're the best, that you're the strongest…don't you want that?_

If this had been one of Daichi and Max's stupid manga series then the hero would already have gone rushing off halfway across the world with a loaded gun and an extremely impractical-looking black cape of some sort. Kai was on the verge of doing that. He was going to do_ something_, no matter what. He just didn't know what to do. He'd packed a suitcase as soon as he had gotten home from the police station, and then after that he hadn't known what to do. It was not enjoyable. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in a situation as stupid and frustrating as this. He saw life as a series of clear, powerful equations. He did one thing, and something else happened; and what he did was always right, and what happened was always right. He was never wrong.

Except when Tyson was involved. To continue the metaphor: Tyson, as a variable, tended to mess up the equations a lot.

His vision kept blurring; every so often his thoughts would slide away and go spinning around in a sort of confused mush before his head nodded and jerked him back awake. He really should sleep. There was no reason for him not to sleep. Tyson would be asleep. Any sensible person would be asleep, in fact. Tyson wasn't even a sensible person, and he would still be asleep. Admittedly Tyson did seem to spend an awfully large portion of his time asleep, so maybe he wasn't the best example…

Kai nodded off into blackness again, and then shook himself awake angrily. He wasn't going to sleep. He was going to wait until he received word of Tyson, and _then_ he was going to sleep. Simple.

He should really talk to Kenny, though.

Tyson would want him to talk to Kenny.

_Why do you want power? Why do you fight?_

_I want him. I want him back. He is not supposed to be anywhere without me. I am where he is. How am I supposed to achieve anything without him? I want him back and I am going to get him back._

He had, at some point, given over to the daydreams. They all involved Tyson, who, having just been rescued, would look haggard and weary, but cocky and full of himself as usual. He would embrace Kai, who would be apologising profusely for having let this happen. Tyson would laugh it off, but Kai would proclaim a vow of loyalty, and swear to protect Tyson always, to earn his trust once more…Tyson would reach out (he wouldn't have to reach too far, because they'd already be standing close – cramped together in a police station, perhaps, or at the airport) and stroke Kai's cheek, and smile: crookedly, tiredly, tenderly…

This is pathetic. You are pathetic. You can't do anything. You can't do anything. What use are you?

_Why do you fight?_

I am strong for him. I am strong because of him. How am I supposed to achieve anything without him?

_You will not fail him again._

* * *

_Mr Dickinson smiled happily and proudly at Tyson and shook his hand. Even though it was such an informal little evening, there were still a lot of reporters there, and they all snapped pictures, the white flashes flickering brightly. The really newsworthy event would take place a month from now when the new BBA offices were finally unveiled, but until then, the world was still hungry for news of Tyson Granger and his team._

_Still hidden in the shadows, Kai continued to gaze up at Tyson. The younger boy's smile was huge, lopsided, and he was blushing heavily, laughing in fake full-of-himself modesty, and to Kai – to Kai, Tyson shone. He seemed to draw in the warm golden light of the fires and the lanterns, absorbing all the light in the world and giving it back tenfold. The air around him was thick with radiance, as though his entire body were made of gold and glitter, as though all the boundless power of the universe – galaxies and stars, constellations and planets – had been concentrated into one bright-burning sun._

_Something was tugging at Kai's chest, as though he were physically connected to Tyson. Part of it was jealousy, because even now he wanted what Tyson had, because even now he wanted to be the one who was powerful and beloved, but it was only a very small part, and the rest of it was longing. It was an ache that went so deep and bled so heavily that he thought he was going to drown in the flood of burning gold. He couldn't stop watching Tyson, and here in the soft trailing shadows he didn't have to hide the pain, didn't have to look away and pretend that he didn't care. Here he could look up at Tyson, drink in everything about him, and the admiration and the love and the pride welled up inside him until he could barely breathe._

_Tyson was starting to walk off the little wooden stage; on the stairs he paused, suddenly, and looked up, his eyes piercing the shadows to meet Kai's gaze. Something between them snapped taut, like a heavy chain suddenly being pulled up into place, and for an instant the longing in Tyson's eyes mirrored Kai's as they faced each other openly, and Kai felt as though he were bleeding out of his body and flowing over into Tyson's - and all Kai wanted was to hold him and kiss him and –_

_Max pulled Tyson down from the steps, flinging an arm around his shoulders and giving him a noogie, and the link was broken as Tyson laughed and pushed Max away; and as Max pushed back and started a mini play-fight, Kai turned and left._

* * *

If, he thought, if: if he had run faster, if had managed to get Tyson away quicker…it was going to be his fault when the police phoned and said _we regret to tell you this, but…_

Except that they weren't going to say that. Tyson would not let himself get killed. Tyson would never give up that easily. Tyson was _Tyson_: stupid kid was bloody unbeatable. No one was ever going to defeat him, except Kai. Tyson would never give up, never. Tyson was going to come home. It was only a matter of time.

But even so, even so, it was going to be Kai's fault…because he hadn't been quick enough, firm enough, clever enough, good enough; and because Kai couldn't do anything, was sitting here being worthless and pathetic, not even brave enough to go and talk to Kenny…_we regret to announce that Kai Hiwatari is responsible for the death of his team mate, Tyson Granger…_

* * *

_He hadn't meant to talk to Tyson – he told himself that he'd been trying to slip away – but before he knew it he was staring into Tyson's face, and the pain in his chest was sharper than anything he'd felt before in his life. Their eyes met, and for a moment everything between them was right out in the open, hanging between them, naked and vulnerable and terrifying._

_Kai's hands seemed to lift themselves up of their own accord, gripping Tyson's elbows. He tried to say something, but his throat was aching and stiff, and so instead he wrapped his arms around Tyson's waist and held him solemnly. For a moment Tyson was tense with shock, and then he slowly lifted his arms and returned the embrace. Cameras flashed, taking __happy feel-good__ photos of the two most famous Beybladers in the world, and several people standing nearby cheered; Max's voice could be heard whooping and snickering over all the rest. Kai buried his face in Tyson's shoulder, feeling clumsy and trapped as their hearts bumped together. Then he let go, and turned away without a word._

_It had been something for everyone to see: something between friends. And even though it was far too much emotion than one teenage boy would normally show for another, between friends it was alright – between friends it was accepted. To Kai alone had it been more: to Kai, it had been the most difficult thing he'd ever had to do. To Tyson it had been something dangerous. The bonds that held them together were so precarious that such an action was a very real threat to their frail, impossible friendship: such a reckless change could shatter everything completely._

_They both knew that they were in love, but it was a knowledge that bumped and bobbed underneath the skin like a heartbeat, never breaking through: loud in one's own ears, but inaudible to all others._

* * *

There came a knock at the door, and Kai rocked, shaken out of his stupor. His head throbbed and rang. Ray's voice called out, "Kai! We _know_ you're in there, buddy!"

"We brought chips and dip!" Max's voice yelled, cheery and stupid.

"C'mon, Kai! Don't go all broody and anti-social on us now!" That was Hilary, also falsely bright.

Kai briefly considered letting them in. Tyson…Tyson would have gotten so pissed off with him. But Tyson wasn't here, and Kai was too tired and too cold to talk…he felt as though he would have to pull the words right out deep inside himself, and it would be a struggle, and it would hurt. He wasn't, he added scathingly to himself, in the mood for a bunch of idiots.

"OK, that does it!" Max called.

"The landlady gave us a spare key, Kai," Ray said. "We're coming in." A pause. "Everyone's worried about you, man."

Kai still said nothing, but he felt like hitting something. He was flicking through his memories, trying to put words into order again. He fought furiously to remember what you said when you were with people, but he couldn't think of anything, and he wanted to shout with frustration. He was still thinking in Russian; he was trying to switch to Japanese, but it was difficult, because all the words were coming so slowly. He felt so empty and loose, as though he were just an old shivering skeleton, all the bare bones knocking together hollowly. He leaned his head back against the wall and gave up. Pathetic. Tyson wouldn't give up.

Tyson would have been risking his life by now, risking his life to save Kai, to save Kenny, to save Daichi, to save any of his friends if they had been in danger. Tyson would _never_ have given up.

"We're coming in now," Ray repeated, uncertainly. The key clicked, and then the door swung open. Footsteps. The pitying silence. Kai stiffened, furious and bleak.

_No one can ever see you weak. No one can ever see you vulenerable. No one can ever see you._

He said, loudly, staring at the ceiling, "I suppose you're all looking for hugs and kisses and a support group. A suggestion? Try Losers Anonymous."

"That's the Kai we know and love!" Max said. "Come on, buddy, we got food!" There was a loud crackle as a foil crisp packet was ripped open. "Mmm! Junk food!"

"Kai, please talk to us," Hilary said, gently, after a long pause.

"You know we're only trying to help," Ray added, a little impatiently.

Another silence.

"You're being pathetic," Hilary snapped, finally. "You think you're the only one upset? Yeah, that's right, act like the grouchy loner again, _as usual_. You don't ever think of other people, do you? You don't ever think of how we're feeling, huh?"

Kai blinked, and was oddly reminded of Tyson yelling, _You don't even care, do you? You don't even realise how important you are to us! Don't you know what it's like watching you turn your back the whole time?_

He stood up, shakily. His head pounded horribly and the ringing got louder, then slowly died away. He cleared his throat, and said, "What do you want here?"

"That's much better," Hilary said, a little sniffily.

"We came to say hi!" Max said. "Can't we say hi to our buddy?"

But Kenny pushed forward and said, in a small whisper, "We came to talk about Tyson."

Still steady, still perfectly in control, Kai said, "Have you heard anything?"

"He isn't the only person to have been taken. There have been other kidnappings, too. He's – he's in Russia now. Boris took him."

Black glass ripping his stomach open; dry fire in his lungs. He felt himself blanch, felt himself go cold all over, then hot, like he had a fever or something. Of course. What else?

There was a hand on his shoulder, a soft gentle hand, and Kai looked up in a distraction of fury to see Hilary leaning close to him. "We miss him so much," she said, and her voice was firm and a bit too loud. "I know you miss him too. He'll – sheesh, he's gonna be so mad with you when he hears how upset you've been! And we want to look after you while he's gone, so don't you dare go falling to pieces. We need you. He'd want you to need us."

"I don't need looking after," Kai said, clearly, and stepped away from her. He was on the point of collapsing; he suddenly realised how long it had been since he'd eaten…and Boris. Again. Sometimes he wondered why it was always Boris, why these things kept coming back over and over again. Kai had long since given up on the daydreams of revenge, the violent fantasies, although suddenly he was remembering them all with precise and mechanical clarity. "Has," he said, steady, remote, "has there been a ransom demand yet?"

"No. We think he's being held to test Black Dragoon."

_Do you want power, boy?_

"The good thing," Ray said, "is that at least we know that he's alive. He's valuable to Boris. He won't be hurt."

"Yes," Kai agreed, curtly, and that was all. "Thank you for telling me. Please go."

"Kai, you look terrible," Ray said, frowning. "We're not about to let you get sick. How long has it been since you slept?"

"I slept last night," Kai lied, tetchily. That was Ray all over, focused, unremitting, never losing his cool. Kai had seen him get violent in the beydish, but never out of it…and Ray didn't understand that the only thing that could ever break through to Kai was Tyson, was Tyson's shouting and determination and power… "Please go away," he said, suddenly. "I don't want you here."

"We have enough to worry about already, you know," Max said. "We need you with us, Kai."

"Go away," Kai said to the floor. "Go away. I don't want you here. Any of you."

Amazingly, they went.

There was a brief noise of whispers, and then shuffling feet, and a banging door.

Kai slid slowly to the floor and wrapped his arms over his head.

He screwed his eyes up tight so that all he could see was a starburst of black, and then he thought. This was good. This was actually very good. He had a goal now. He had something to do. Like a Beybattle: defeat Tyson.

Only now: find Tyson. That was how simple it was. There was nothing else to do. He could not fail; failure was impossible. It was not something that he could allow to happen, because if he failed the consequences would be too terrible to accept.

_He'd want you to need us…_

No. Not them. He wasn't going to put them in danger. Besides, he could do this by himself. He wasn't going to let Tyson think he was weak, think he was dependant, and he wasn't going to hurt Tyson's friends. Who were his own friends too, really. _My friends. I'm not going to hurt my friends_.

After a long time, he stood up, surveyed the empty apartment: bleak floor and spindly furniture and the wide windows open to the pale sky, and the cold breeze blowing everywhere. The only splash of colour was the brightly-coloured packet of crisps that lay on a chair. Kai regarded it for a moment, and then picked it up and opened it. He couldn't go to Russia if he was hungry.

* * *

He had only one photograph of Tyson. Mr Dickinson had taken it, a while after the whole BEGA thing: _come, now, Kai, smile!_

Kai disliked and mistrusted photographs deeply, seeing as they were generally taken either by annoying teenagers who were addicted to cell phones, or by press photographers who were loud and nosy and disrespectful; but Tyson had flung an arm around his neck and grinned madly and flashed a victory sign, and Kai had leaned his head against Tyson's and closed his eyes and smiled in gentle exasperation, and the camera had flickered and that had been that.

Afterwards, he had stolen the photograph from the BBA Wall of Fame. It had been simple: when no one was around, he had unhooked the little photo frame, taken the picture out, and then put the frame back on the wall. No one had said anything official about it. The frame was left empty. It ended up as something of a BBA legend – the fabled Missing Photograph. _Ooh, scary,_ Kai had drawled on hearing Max's account. _What's next, the Phantom of the Opera?_

_The _real_ question_, Max had hinted, waggling his eyebrows madly, _is_ _who would want a picture of Kai and Tyson, anyway?_

Kai had shot him a dirty look, and Tyson, blushing furiously, had elbowed Max very hard, and nothing else had been said.

Since Kai's daring robbery, the photograph had lived in a plain wooden frame on Kai's otherwise-boring bedside table. He saw it every single day when he woke up and when he went to sleep, and often he spent a lot of the time in between looking at it. Because…because Tyson –

Because Tyson was the only one…because Tyson was the most important person in the world. The only one worth fighting – the one Kai could never defeat, no matter how hard he tried – the one person who burned so fiercely and so brightly…

Now, Kai carefully took the photograph from its frame, and slipped it into his pocket, where it would be safe. He checked his other pocket, running his fingers over Dranzer's edge, letting them linger on Dragoon. He left enough money on the table for two months' rent; if he didn't come back after that time then they could sell the apartment and he wouldn't care. All the possessions he valued and needed were in his bag.

* * *

He took a taxi to the airport at dusk: grey sky and grey city, the fine glittering rain sweeping over everything, the roads cold as a snail and lonely. _I will find you._ Soot and carbon monoxide and exhaust fumes billowed and tore, stained a dark pervasive gold by the sodium of the streetlights. He breathed in the cold air, pale face to the ashen sky.

Rain and thunder always reminded him of Tyson. Just the littlest things caught at him, the smallest connections…it had used to be like that whenever some newspaper article or umpire had said something, however inane, about _Granger's archrival Hiwatari_ or _Hiwatari, widely regarded as the world's top blader in terms of technical ability and endurance, is still considered to be Granger's most dangerous competition_…anything linking them, any proof of what was between them, any proof that there _was_ something between them.

He waited for his flight, having already booked his ticket by telephone. The bleached lights and gleaming tiled floors blinded him, and the words and faces around blurred over to grey, blurred over until they left him feeling hungry, almost: unfulfilled, sick with a ceaseless stale ache. His chest hurt when he thought about Tyson. It was worry. It was the fact that he didn't want Tyson to be hurt. More than that: it was the fact that he needed Tyson to be with him. He trusted Tyson, had faith in his strength, knew that Tyson would never give up, would never let go. Tyson would probably end up rescuing his own stupid self, if he managed to work out how.

But it was _Boris_.

And it was longing. It was the fact that he needed Tyson with him. It was that.

_You really are selfish_.

He leaned back in his seat, pressed his hands to his face. He couldn't take the waiting. He had to do something, had to be out there fighting, had to be active. He had never been so tired in his life, but he needed to fight. He had to.

He heard a voice, some half-remembered voice heard above the noise of the crowd, and opened his eyes.

"Hey, there, Kai-man," Ray said, easily, plopping down on the seat next to Kai. He put a hand on his shoulder. "You OK?"

Kai gripped his wrist and said, in a low, furious voice, "Leave me alone. Turn around and walk away right now. You have nothing to do with me and I have nothing to do with you, and if you try to say anything to stop me I will kill you."

"If Tyson could see you he'd be ashamed of you," Ray said, calmly.

"Leave me alone."

"We're not going to sit around doing nothing any more than you are. He's a Bladebreaker. You're a Bladebreaker. We look after each other and we stick together, got that?"

"Yo," Max said, taking the seat on the other side of Kai while Daichi trailed along afterwards, pounding furiously at his GameBoy. "So. Is Kai being a pissy idiot or have you talked him round yet?"

"What do you think?" Ray muttered. "I think we need Hilary to yell at him again."

"Die, alien scum!" Daichi agreed, his tongue sticking out in concentration.

Kai was sitting very, very still.

Max snickered. "Aww, you upset we ruined your little rescue mission?" he said, looking very pleased with himself. "Sorry, man, no more gallivanting halfway across the continent for you."

"My flight is booked out," Kai said.

"Yeah. By us. The Chief was watching the computers."

"You're going to get hurt. Don't be stupid."

"Hey, guys!" Hilary called.

"Hey, Hil!" Max called back, waving wildly. "Hey, Chief! We found him!"

Kai stood up, looked around. "This is ridiculous," he said, flatly. "You're going to get hurt."

"So it's OK for us to get hurt, but not you?" Hilary enquired. "Or are you just so amazingly skilled that nothing will happen to you, huh?"

"I don't have as many –" he searched for the words, shaking with anger and frustration "- _ties_ as you do. You have families. You can't honestly say your parents _agreed_ to this?"

"Er…well…my mom doesn't really know I'm here," Hilary said, sheepishly. "But it's all my own money from my savings and I left her a note explaining and we'll find a hotel or something and everything will be fine, I promise!"

"Exactly," Ray said. "Kai, you're being selfish. This isn't about you. It's about him. It's about us doing whatever we can. Even if it's stupid and reckless, as long as we're trying."

"We're running away from home," Kenny was muttering frantically. He seemed to be returning to his old self, however slightly. "We're running _away_

from _home_. Ohhhh, this is awful. I am going to be grounded forever. No, really, I am. Forever and ever and ever. I won't even be allowed to go to my own _funeral_. That's how grounded I am."

"Oh, _honestly_, Chief."

"I won't be allowed time on the Internet. No Internet means no _life_. What is the point in carrying on?"

"Isn't it supposed to be no Internet means no porn?"

"No porn means no life!"

"Whoa. _Whoa._ Chief, we never knew."

"Gaaack, ignore that! Why are you not _listening_ to me? We are _running away from home_!"

"Chill, Chief, it's not _that_ bad."

"Yeah, toughen up, buddy."

"If you guys haven't noticed by now, when I'm worried it's usually for an extremely good reason!"

Kai grabbed his suitcase and strode away from the group, shoulders heaving. He could hear again the frustrated, sympathetic silence that he left in his wake, imagine how they would all bite their lips and shoot each other knowing looks. _You go after him. Nah, you. No, I think you should. Oh, fine. Guess I'll try talk some sense into him_.

He didn't care what they thought about him.

He knew that he was being selfish, that he was wasting valuable effort and time. They should be working together. He shouldn't be making this all about him. He knew that. And yet – he hadn't pictured this. He didn't want to have to be accountable for them. They weren't responsible enough, and he couldn't take care of them; and after all these years, his position in the team, when he had to take it, was that of knight, defender, security force. Daichi was just a kid. Hilary had no method of defence. It was just stupid, utterly wasteful and reckless. It was not viable. Besides: he could do this quicker and more efficiently. He didn't need variables or sundries. He needed it to be simple and powerful and straightforward.

He didn't need anyone with him.

He was walking blind now; he didn't know where he was going – he was just pushing his way steadily through the crowd, letting his vision blur. It had been so long since he had slept…after a while he found himself staring out of the wide windows into the twilight of the runways beyond. The lights of the aeroplane streamed out in the dimness, trailing blue and orange. He leaned his forehead to the windowpane briefly, just long enough to feel the cold and see his breath flare grey and die, see his own eyes flat and ghostly in the glass.

Then he straightened up, setting his fists on the window-ledge. A young woman stood nearby, a fat baby clutching a toy frog clamped to her hip. A plane had just landed, and people were starting to disembark. She was on tiptoe, peering out, making excited faces at the baby, waggling her eyebrows until it gurgled. All of a sudden she took the baby's hand and waved it excitedly, saying, "Look, there's your daddy! Wave for daddy!"

Kai looked away. Noise was all around him, glare was all around him: motion, routine, normality. He didn't want that. He was grey now, he was grey and lifeless: he was routine, he was stilted motion. He'd been here before, in a hundred different airports across the world, looking out beyond the glass to the black sky and the cold wild wind. He didn't want that anymore. He never wanted that ever again.

"You listen here," Hilary began from behind him, her voice midway between tears and anger.

Kai turned his face away. "I have to find him," he said, hoarsely.

"We know," she said. "We will."

"I can do this better on my own," he said. "You have to trust me. I can't do this if you interfere."

"We need you with us," she said. "We need everyone."

Max jogged up, with the others close behind. "You're the only one interfering at the moment, Kai old buddy," Max said. "Because if you're not working with us, then you're messing our plans up. And I'd say you have to trust us."

Kai started. He did trust them. Didn't he? He trusted their strength, respected them as rivals. Shouldn't he trust them with Tyson, as well?

"I just," he said to no one, palms flat on the ledge of the wide window. His brain wasn't working properly. He couldn't _think_, couldn't work out the solution to this, even though there had to be one. "I just have to _find him_…" He hated this, hated the messiness of others, the confusion; but he hated emotional imprecision as well, hated self-centeredness and hesitation…

_Suck it up_, he told himself, sharply.

_About time_, Tyson agreed in his head.

"Alright," he said, out loud. "Fine. Fine, whatever."

They all let out sighs of relief. "That's more like it," Ray said.

"And – I have money in Russia," Kai added. "I know a hotel where we can stay – we – we can book rooms online during the flight. We'll be alright." Drawing himself up, he finished off with, "I actually put some thought into this, unlike you, it seems."

"Awesome," Ray grinned. "Here we go."

* * *

Kai fell asleep almost as soon as the plane had taken off. He had a dream that he didn't like, an odd mechanical dream that somehow involved sinking into black glass until he was entirely encased in obsidian, unable to move or breathe. He woke with a start, his neck aching and stiff. He often had dreams like that, dreams where he was held down by invisible chains. _Hag-ridden_ – that was what they called it in Russia: the witch sitting on your chest, sucking out your breath. Kenny had said it was a fairly common phenomenon. Tyson had said it was creepy.

_You don't ever get, like, nightmares, do you?_

The plane was in darkness; Daichi was snoring away on Max's shoulder. Only Kenny was still awake, judging by the glow of his laptop. He looked up briefly, as though he knew that Kai had been watching him. Their eyes met for a moment, and then Kenny smiled a haggard, sad little smile, and went back to work.

Kai turned away, stared at the seat in front of him. Eventually, he fell asleep again.

* * *

**end note:** i honest to goodness wrote ninety per cent of this two years ago. urgh.


	3. iii

**Title**: The Hollow Place

**Fandom:** Beyblade

**Pairing:** Tyson/Kai

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings: **shounen-ai, violence, blah. the usual.

**Disclaimer:** Beyblade and all associated terms, characters, etc. are not mine. no money is being made off this fic.

**Length:** 6 100

**Note: **brooklyn's in this one, huzzah! i couldn't resist putting him in. broody misunderstood genius with gorgeous green eyes and the final attack to end all final attacks and WINGS…ohohoho, come over here honey! XDDDD i like to think that he's been hanging around with hiro, 'cause they're cute together. also i actually had to go wiki the name of johnny's bitbeast seeing as my sister is still hoarding all our first season DVDs. it's been too long.

* * *

He'd had this dream before loads of times: the glassy lights and the darkness and the brilliance and the roar of the people cheering, and the cameras going off and the big screen flashing _WINNER – TYSON GRANGER_ and Kai holding him, solid and warm, his stupid annoying smug voice saying gently, _It's alright. I'm not leaving. I'm here._

Then the bell went off again, waking Tyson up like a ton of cold water over his face. He opened his eyes and then closed them again, screwing them up tight. Every morning it was the same: a hard, choking ball threatening to explode inside him into panic. Every morning it was the same: he held his breath, and then he breathed out slowly, and then said aloud, "One day closer to getting out of here." And then it was OK. It got harder every time, but it was OK. For now.

Nine days was a long time away from home.

He put on the dorky grey uniform they shoved through the slot in the door every morning. It was difficult to pull the long sleeve over his left arm, which was heavily bandaged: the pain was even worse than it had been yesterday, but he got it done at last, and then yelled, "OK, OK, I'm awake! Let me outta here already, you bozos!"

This morning, though, instead of the usual warden in black, it was Boris who faced him after the door had been unlocked. "Good morning, Mr Granger. I hope you're feeling better today?"

"Oh, wow, it's the big guy himself, come to say hello," Tyson said. "How're you doing, creep?"

"Mr Granger, I'm afraid I don't have time for this. Your arm is healing well, I take it?"

"No thanks to you freaks," Tyson said.

"The medic will be checking up on it again today, of course," Boris added, graciously. "Never let it be said I don't take good care of my boys."

"Coulda fooled me," Tyson muttered.

"What was that, Mr Granger?"

"Nothing," Tyson said, innocently, and then added, under his breath, "Freak."

Boris gripped Tyson's arm and twisted it very painfully. He said, tersely, "Would you care to behave yourself?"

"No," Tyson gritted out, and pulled away with difficulty, breathing hard. He glared up at Boris. "Keep your hands off me."

"As you wish, Mr Granger, as you wish. But you will curb your insolence or else I'll expect you for a remedial session this evening. That would, of course, only cause more damage to your arm. Are we understood?"

"Shut up," Tyson said. "And get out."

"Very well. You will report for remedials after dinner. Nine o' clock, as usual. Does that suit you? Good. Now hurry along – breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

"Like you can call the stuff you give us breakfast," Tyson snorted, but only after Boris was gone. Remedial sessions – plain boring drudgery – were the worst of the worst. Presumably. They were the worst thing anyone had ever _heard_ of happening here, but more frightening were the things you _didn't_ hear about – like the Korean blader, who had shown up for dinner one evening with bandages all over his face and three deep gouges that extended down one side of his face from his scalp to his collarbone, and who had not spoken a single word afterwards. Or like Johnny, who had ended up losing three fingers and a lot of skin after some experiments with Salamalyon that hadn't gone well.

There were fifteen others here. Tyson knew nearly all of them by sight: professional bladers, top of the international circuit, all young and brilliant, all male. Johnny and Oliver from the Majestics were among them, along with Brooklyn, Rick, Mikhail and Raoul. There were rumours that others had been here before, of course, that the first batch of captives hadn't survived their training, but then again there were a lot of rumours like that. People getting turned into Bitbeasts, Bitbeasts getting turned into people, medical experiments, experiments involving endurance, strength, agility…you stopped believing everything you heard after a while on principle, because otherwise you'd lose it.

_You don't want to get too good_, people said. _When you do they start pushing you. They take you out and they train you – underwater, in extreme heat, in extreme cold. They do stuff to you._

_I heard they do brain scans to see how you connect with your Bitbeast, right, only they have to operate, and they put something in your head that sees what you're thinking._

_Yeah, I heard that. I heard they don't bother with anaesthetics, even. Waste of money. They just cut you up while you're awake._

_Yeah, right._

_They do. My dorm's near the med wing. You know that door, that red one? Yeah, I swear I heard screams from behind there. And this doctor came out and he had blood all over his gloves._

_This one guy said they did experiments to see if pain is an incentive for performance, like if you fight harder when you have to break free of pain. They torture you and stuff. They shock you if you don't do well._

There were a lot of stories that did the rounds.

What was almost certainly true was that the sixteen kept in this area were not the only captives. There was another larger, less intensive wing of the Abbey where younger Russian children were held and trained, just like in the old days. _We get the VIP suite_, Rick had said, sarcastically. _Great._

Guards everywhere, of course, guys in uniform with tasers and cudgels, and then of course the med guys. Sedation was a favourite punishment for misbehaviour. Some creep would stab you in the arm with a needle and then everything would go black. You'd wake up at 2 AM, dumped in your bunk, unable to get back to sleep and with the worst headache of your life. It didn't pay to get on the wrong side of the guards. They were tough, they were tired, they didn't get paid much, they worked bad hours, and they held grudges.

It didn't pay to set one foot out of line at all.

* * *

The small canteen was almost empty by the time Tyson arrived; everyone else would be in the showers already. Tyson sat down next to Brooklyn, who was hunched over poking moodily at his food. "Yo."

Brooklyn looked up with the faintest hint of a smile on his face. "Morning," he said, and then: "The, ah…arm?"

"So…much…pain…" Tyson whispered, slumping forward onto the table and giving a long groan. "'M afraid…they're gonna have to amputate…but I'll live…or maybe…maybe I won't live…ahhhh, remember me as I was, ol' buddy!"

Brooklyn rolled his eyes and laughed softly and said, "You're crazy."

"Yup!" Tyson agreed, brightly, leaping back up to sit bolt upright. "Annnnnd I'm hungry!" He waved his unhurt arm in the air, trying to attract attention from the guards at the other end of the room. "Oi! OI! You people gonna starve us now or what?"

"Shut up!" Brooklyn hissed, the friendliness evaporating instantly.

"Scaredy-cat," Tyson shot back. "HEY! OVER HERE!"

Eventually one of the guards came striding over briskly and set down two platters on the table in front of them. "Keep it down," he said to Tyson.

"OK, sure. Maybe next you could quit beating kids up for a living and get a normal job. How's that sound, huh?"

"Right, you're being reported," the guard said. "Got yourself some more remedials to look forward to."

"Fine," Tyson said, flushing with anger. "Fine. Go crying to Boris. Knock yourself out."

The guard's hand strayed to his cudgel: just for an instant, as a warning. "Watch out," he said. "I only tolerate so much."

Brooklyn just sat and picked at his food for a long time after the guard left. Eventually, sounding a little like his old superior self, but not much, he said: "You're going to get really badly hurt if you keep up like this."

Tyson said, levelly, "They're screwing your life up, they're screwing my life up, and – and when Kai was a kid they screwed him up, too. If they think they can get away with all that then they're even dumber than I thought they were. I'm not working for these jerks, OK? I don't care what they do to me. I'm not helping them."

"But your arm – do you want something like that to happen again? Another injury like that could put you out of the Beyblading circuit for weeks."

"So?" Tyson said, loudly. "Who cares? I'm not Beyblading for them!"

"You don't think about these things, do you?" Brooklyn snapped. "You're being stupid. If you can't Beyblade then _there's no reason for them to keep you here_. Then they cut their losses and you're as good as dead."

"I don't care!" Tyson shouted.

"Fine. Your funeral." Brooklyn paused, and swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then he said, "You know we're not going to get out of here. No one knows where we are. Kai isn't coming to rescue you."

"I don't need Kai to get me out of here," Tyson said, lifting his chin. "I can actually do stuff by myself, you know. I don't depend on other people to fight my battles for me. Not that you'd know, seeing as my brother spends most of his time looking after you."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Brooklyn asked, in a sad, tired voice.

"It means you're a coward. You probably love this, don't you? You don't have to talk to anyone or make any real friends, you can just do whatever these freaks tell you to do."

"Stop it."

"I heard you came _willingly_. Figures."

"They had Hiro and Garland at gunpoint. Just like with you and your friends." Brooklyn pushed his chair back and picked up his tray. "I'll see you later."

Tyson fumed and stabbed angrily at his breakfast. He had no idea what it was and he didn't want to know, either. He rubbed his face and thought miserably of Ray's cooking.

* * *

There was a disused stairwell that led off the second arena. It was blocked up with crates and an old trolley, but if you pushed those away quietly then you could sneak into the stairs easily. Oliver, on his first day here, had sneakily managed to push the CCTV camera aside by dint of careful work with a long tube of discarded cardboard, and now the stairwell had become the one place anyone could go without being monitored.

A system had been developed among the captives that allowed everyone some free time. There was a largely unsupervised laundry session that lasted half an hour every day, and everyone was supposed to wash his own clothes and sheets; however, if one person did the work of two, then the other could slip off unnoticed. The next day they would swap. It was a good system.

Tyson clambered over the pile of old boxes, fell flat on his behind, got up, swore, and stomped up the dimly-lit steps to sit next to Brooklyn. "Hey," he said, grudgingly.

"Hello."

They sat in silence for a while. Tyson affected nonchalance, sitting with his legs kicked out in front of him and his arms crossed, his nose in the air. Brooklyn sat with his shoulders held very straight and his head bowed very low, and stared meekly at his hands. At the top of the stairs was a heavily padlocked service door, made of thick reinforced steel and painted grey, just like everything else in this place. Every now and then it would rattle, and a thin stream of icy air would blow in around the edges. This door was the last link to the outside world, and was the hinge of many excited escape plans, none of which had ever gotten very far beyond _we break out of the dorms and make a run for it and then get whacked by a zillion guards with guns and tasers_.

Tyson's butt was starting to hurt from the cold concrete step he was sitting on. He fidgeted, gave a loud, exaggerated sigh, and finally said, "Sorry, OK?"

"It's alright," Brooklyn said, immediately.

"And I don't want to get all touchy-feely and talk about it and whatever, alright?" Tyson continued, loudly. "I'm just pissed off. I'm sick of these creeps and doing nothing is making me go crazy."

"It's _alright_."

"And I don't really think that about you. You're cool. I said stuff I shouldn't have said and I'm sorry. You're my friend, bro. And Hiro –"

"Tyson!" Brooklyn interrupted.

"What?"

"It's OK." Brooklyn grinned languidly, his eyes creasing up at the corners just a little. "I'm, ah, I'm pissed off as well." He leaned back, his elbows on the step behind him, and turned his face to the ceiling. He had been here for nearly a full month, longer than anyone else. A month was enough to turn all memory of sunlight into fluorescent strip lighting, of grass into grubby concrete and grey plastic. "I miss," he said, "being outside. I miss the sky."

Tyson thought for an instant of a golden hill, of a bright glittering river and a fiery sunset. It made his chest hurt. He leaned back, too, and nudged Brooklyn's arm with his elbow. "So, Mr Ultimate Genius Super-Whammy Psychic Powers," he said, cheerily. "I saw the stuff you were doing in the Psych Labs earlier. Looked awesome."

"Eh? Oh. They're trying to figure out how to control Zeus's power." Brooklyn laughed sadly. "They're amping up everyone else but they're toning me down."

"Seriously, though, it looked _so_ _awesome_. All kickass Matrix stuff, and…stuff. Reeeeally cool."

"It isn't. Not really. I mean, _even_ I don't understand what I'm doing half the time. They don't have any idea of what they're trying to do. If something goes wrong then…well, you remember what happened to the BEGA building."

Tyson did remember. He stared at him. "You could bust us out of here in like two seconds, you know," he said, flatly.

"What I could do is get us all killed, yes," Brooklyn agreed, smiling again, but still with the same quiet sadness that never really went away. "I've gotten a lot stronger since I last faced you, seeing as I've actually been doing some work for a change. Theoretically I'm capable of destroying the world entirely. You know that, I suppose. I could open a rift and then everything would be gone. And then of course I could recreate it in an instant. It's possible that I've already have done that several times over. How would we know?"

"I think I know why Hiro stuck around with you," Tyson muttered, shivering as a thin stream of cold air rattled in underneath the door. "You're a lot more interesting than I am."

Brooklyn shifted uncomfortably at that, and then admitted, "He isn't very focused on me. He never was. I think he's still building me up just so you can knock me down again. I'm always going to be the benchmark – just something he can use to measure you against."

"Stupid jerk. All he cares about is being the best."

"Look who's talking."

"Yeah, but – but I actually _like_ Beyblading!" Tyson waved his arms around emphatically, and then stopped, because his injury was hurting worse and worse by the minute, although he was trying not to show it. "I…it's my passion, you know? I mean, you gotta have a _reason_ to want to be the best – like, like not just so that you can show off about it, but 'cause it means something, 'cause you've worked for it and you love it!" He grinned. "Heh, that sounded pretty cool." He waited for Kai to say _actually, it was nauseating_, but Kai didn't, because Kai wasn't there. He swallowed, and then forced himself to grin even wider. "Words of wisdom from Jedi Master Tyson, yup. Wise, Master Tyson is. Great knowledge of the Force he has."

"You see? That's what I mean," Brooklyn said, smiling a sad little lopsided smile. "You're the strong one. You've got years of technical training and experience that I'll never catch up, you know. You're the real hero."

"Yeah, but you can create parallel dimensions," Tyson protested, sulkily. "No fair."

"Yo," Oliver said, climbing neatly over the boxes and dropping daintily to the floor. "We've got maybe fifteen minutes. What's up?"

"The ceiling," Brooklyn replied.

"Pessimist," Oliver said, sitting down next to Tyson and punching him on the shoulder. "You dead from the food yet? Did you _see_ breakfast this morning? I knew their standards were low, but that is _beneath_ low. That is lower than the earth's core. Which, in fact, is where the food should be. Incinerated. Come on, back me up here. You're a connoisseur! You're my one ally!"

"How about," Tyson said, "how about, when we get out of here, you whip us up the best gourmet cooking ever, and we all pig out?"

"Sounds like a plan, my friend. Only you'd still be paying, of course."

"Hey, no fair! I'm a world-renowned food critic! _You_ should be paying _me_ to waste my time on you! You know how many chefs have _begged_ me to eat their food? _Please, Tyson, please, give us your wisdom! Teach us how to be like you! Your tastebuds reign supreme and know no equal_!"

"You are a freak."

"Yeah, yeah, look who's talking."

Brooklyn snorted softly, but kept smiling.

* * *

Dinner time was the best time of the day: only two guards on duty, and a meal that was hot, if tasteless.

"I heard, right, I heard," some guy was saying, Haruka or someone, "I heard they keep the girls in the floor below. You know down by the service elevator, the – yeah, the one by Arena 2? Mm. Down there, that's the girls' ward."

"They don't keep girls here, never have," Rick put in. "Don't be stupid. Guys only."

"Yeah, mostly 'cause Boris is a creepyass paedophile."

"There _are_ girls," Haruka insisted. "Ming Ming? That Ming Ming chick?" He gestured vaguely towards Brooklyn with a plastic knife. Brooklyn ignored him. He rarely spoke to anyone except Tyson. "The singer, the one on your team, with the little black dress."

"Oh, yeah, the black dress I remember," someone else remarked.

"She's here. She got taken. I heard she signed a contract with BEGA and they pushed her career up, and when she broke away from them they got angry."

"Ming Ming's not here. She's too high-profile. They'd never risk going after a celebrity."

"Pity," Rick commented. "She's hot."

"You know who was _seriously_ high-quality? That Julia Fernandez girl, the circus performer. Strong blader."

"Heh, she could get acrobatic with me anytime."

"You shut up," Raoul snapped. "She's my sister, you jerk."

"Yo, Granger," Johnny called across the table. He was having trouble eating without the usual numbers of fingers, but some of the bandages had come off his face, which was probably a good thing. "Hey! Over here!"

"What do _you_ want?" Tyson snapped.

"How come none of the original Abbey guys got taken? Those Russian guys, the Demolition Dudes or whatever."

"How'm I supposed to know?" Tyson rolled his eyes. "Geez, why am I suddenly the expert?"

"Figured Hiwatari would have told you something," Johnny shrugged, then winced at the motion. "Or was he too busy being a prissy little bastard?" he grated out, trying not to show the pain.

"Uh, dude? Don't know if you noticed, but Kai isn't exactly the spill-your-guts touchy-feely share-with-the-class kind of guy." Tyson shifted, trying to get his arm comfortable and not meeting with much success. "We never asked him about this place, and he never said anything."

"But you broke him out before, didn't you?" Raoul queried.

"I heard you blew the original place up," Haruka put in, leaning over the table excitedly.

"I wish," Tyson muttered.

"Hey, my brother trained with Tala Ivanov once – wasn't he the one they turned into a cyborg or something? I remember that battle, you versus him, World Championship Finals 2001. That was the year I went pro."

"Is it true you can speak to your Bitbeast?"

"Yeah. Only that one time, though. It's pretty rare for it to happen," Tyson said, importantly.

"What I don't get," Brooklyn said, in his quiet voice, "is why they took you, and not Kai."

That was the exact thing Tyson had been trying very hard not to think about.

"Tyson's World Champion, duh," Oliver said, a little defensively, and then added, "Kai's over the hill."

"He is not," Tyson snapped. "He's the most powerful blader in history and that's a proven _fact_. He's the best blader in the whole entire world and you have _no_ idea how much he's sacrificed for this sport and he has fought _so_ hard to come back after the whole BEGA thing and if you _ever_ –"

"Hey, relax," Oliver smirked, holding his hands up in defeat. "Quite the dutiful wife, aren't you? Sticking up for your man."

"You're dead. You are DEAD. You JERK, you are SO DEAD."

"He's got a point, though," Rick cut in.

"What do you _mean_ he's got a point? Listen, if _one_ _more person_ says _anything else _about Kai then –"

"What the hell, kid? Chill. I meant about why you're here and Kai isn't. Max said Kai was the one they designed Black Dranzer for."

Tyson shrugged, still glowering at Oliver. "Do I look like Kenny to you? I don't know everything. I mean, I know my vast and superior intellect is daunting, but even still, I'm only human."

"Shut up," Oliver advised him, lazily.

It was only after Haruka had turned the conversation at his end of the table back to girls in general and to girls who wore short black dresses in specific that Tyson added, in a low, angry voice, "Kai would have busted out of here in about a second. He'd never let these creeps push him around."

He made that remark at least three times a day, but this time, Brooklyn didn't sigh or pick an argument. Instead, he gave Tyson one of his piercing, quiet looks. He had an unsettling manner of looking at people sometimes, as though he could see right through them, as though…as though every person were just a sort of magic trick, an illusion, and Brooklyn knew how the trick worked, and wasn't fooled by it. Odd, considering that he didn't even spend that much time around people…but Brooklyn _was_ odd. He said, softly, "Kai's quite something, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Tyson agreed, fiercely, and the knowledge was a flame in his chest. "He's amazing. He's – he's the greatest blader ever, greater than I'll ever be. I mean, don't ever tell him I said that, but…he's just…I mean, can you _get_ any better than him? You should _see_ him practising these days, it's scary…him and Daichi were blading this one time, and he pulled this _awesome_ move, right when – gaaack! Why are you looking at me like that?_"_

"Oh, no reason."

"Well, quit it!" Tyson gulped. "It's creeping me out!"

Brooklyn grinned smugly, as though at a private joke, and said, "_Quite_ the old married couple, you and Kai."

"HEY!"

"Always a bridesmaid, never the bride…"

"Why can I not just have a normal conversation about Kai, my _friend_ who is _male_ and _straight_, without the entire world trying to throw me a baby shower or something? Sheesh! Don't go projecting your weird fantasies onto me and Kai! And quit laughing! It's not FUNNY!"

At this point one of the lab guys entered the canteen complete with a clipboard. This happened nearly every evening. "To report for remedial sessions, please," he said, and then read off, "Tyson Granger."

"Wow, there's a surprise," Haruka drawled. "The undefeated remedials champ. Nice."

"Just 'cause I don't act like a pansy and do whatever some freaks in uniform tell me to do," Tyson shot back as he got to his feet. "Unlike some."

"Yeah, yeah," Haruka said, and, surprisingly, smiled at Tyson. "You're crazy," he said, but in an almost admiring tone.

"Mm, the voices in my head say that all the time," Tyson muttered, and then treated the entire table to his lopsided, cocky grin. "See you in the movies, guys."

"No talking," the lab guy snapped. "Mr Granger, hurry, please."

To Tyson's surprise, he was escorted not to the arenas, but to an elevator. They travelled upwards, which was also new. You only ever went down here. Up was where the personnel and staff lived. Up, it also turned out, was a lot nicer than down, involving proper tiled floors, potted plants, wooden panelling, and warmth. Tyson was shown into a large study that could have belonged to any CEO in any modern, fashion-conscious company in the world – smooth lines, wide marble-topped desk, sleek silver computers, minimalist art on the walls.

"Evening, Mr Granger," Boris said from behind the desk. He seemed to be enjoying the whole super-villain thing. He even had his fingers steepled together.

"How come you get cool places like this and we don't?" Tyson complained. "No fair. What about us? We could sue."

"You could sue me for a lot of things if you had access to a lawyer, which, happily, you don't. Now, you've been here almost two weeks, am I right?"

"Nine days."

"That'll do." He stood up. "Come along, then."

"Eh? No, wait, _where_?"

Boris pressed a button on his desk and a section of the wall behind him slid away. Tyson gawped, and almost admitted that it was cool. Boris stood up, entered a code into a keypad on the wall, and then smiled pleasantly as a little _ting!_ sounded and elevator doors swooshed open. "How about a behind-the-scenes tour, Mr Granger?"

"No way," Tyson said, backing up. A guard gripped his shoulders and thrust him forward. "No _way_."

"It's something that might interest you."

"I doubt that. Oi, let go of me."

"You have my word that you won't be harmed," Boris said, motioning towards the elevator door. "Please."

Tyson just snorted, yanking himself away from the guard. "Whatever," he muttered, stalking towards the elevator. "Beats remedials."

"You've been using the standard practice models, am I correct?" Boris asked as they moved downwards smoothly.

"Yeah."

"Would you be interested in using something more powerful?"

"I want Dragoon back."

"We are not in possession of Dragoon. We do, however, have something far more powerful."

Tyson's stomach gave a lurch as the elevator came to a stop and the doors parted. There was an odd, singed smell on the air, the smell of burning rubber and friction, a dangerous spinning smell. They passed into a dim grey workshop, bare concrete and a few workbenches. The far side was brightly lit, and a huge vault dominated one wall. "This is the product of quite a few years' work," Boris said, conversationally, moving swiftly to the vault. He keyed in a code on another little keypad, and then pressed his hand briefly against a scanner, which flashed green. "Exponential improvements on your Dragoon, I think you'll find."

Tyson said nothing, but moved forward. His heart was beating hard. Suddenly things were making sense. "I'm not some sell-out," he said, loudly, even though he kept walking towards the heavy vault door, which was swinging outwards with a groaning of metal. "It's not about the power. What kind of blader do you think I am?"

"Oh, I know it's not about the power," Boris said. He stood aside to let Tyson pass. "It's about spirit, isn't it? It's about friendship and happiness and feeling good about yourself, isn't it? Charming."

"I can't believe you can be this stupid," Tyson scoffed, reaching out and gripping the metal casing of the vault with his good arm, feeling it searingly cold under his fingers. That same odd friction was in the air again, a deadly-dark burning. He saw, briefly and inexplicably, a singed sepia sky, felt soft satiny-soft ash smooth between finger and thumb. He hung back. "You pick _me_? You pick me even though you _know_ I'd never desert Dragoon? What the hell? If you've got some messed-up super blade then give it to Haruka or someone, someone who's never had a bitbeast. Geez, you're stupid."

"We find that bladers who are strongly bonded with their bitbeasts produce the highest results," Boris said. "We were hoping you would establish a partnership with Black Dragoon."

"Keep dreaming."

"It could be very beneficial."

"Screw this," Tyson said, violently, backing away. "I'm out of here. Thanks, but no thanks."

He hadn't taken three steps when he knew that something was wrong. The colour was draining away from the world right before his eyes, and the smell of burning whirring metal was so heavy and smoky in his mouth that he gagged, his eyes stinging. He felt as though he were breathing in sand. He saw again the heavy sky, felt a blade too sharp to be seen drag at his fingers, scoring them to thick plum-bright shreds.

He blinked furiously, hacking and wheezing. Boris seemed to have backed into a corner and was talking rapidly into some sort of comlink at his wrist. There came the white snap of electricity. The room was suddenly flooded with static, so thick and invasive that sparks rebounded and flowed along every surface, staining the terrible concentrated darkness blue. After-images writhed and wriggled in Tyson's eyes. His hair was crackling, and when he moved, sparks streamed around him.

"Oh, no you don't," he muttered, thickly. "Bastard."

He staggered towards the vault, ignoring Boris, who was still squawking for back-up and emergency procedures. He gripped the metal of the door again, which in retrospect was an extremely stupid thing to do. It juddered and bit at him, making him snatch his hand away with a cry. He felt a bruised, blue-tang pain shudder horribly through his arm, and sank to his knees, breathing shallowly. "Right," he said. "Right. You asked for it. You big stupid mutated pile of junk."

He opened his palms and walked forward into the vault, careful not to touch the metal. The floor was of rubber, which was sensible, but the single metal box right at the centre was of iron. Tyson hung back, regarding it warily. "Hey," he said. "Cut it out. I'm not working with you. I know I'm crazy, but I'm not that crazy. Plus I can kick your ass any time I want to. You're just some messed-up experiment. You're not anything real."

He had the odd notion that the little metal box rocked, just as though there were a kitten or a puppy inside it. It glowed dimly, and he knew that if he touched it the resulting shock would be enough to kill any normal person, and probably to knock him out for a while; he had always had some resistance to electricity, some affinity with it that had grown greater after Dragoon had found him, but he was hardly shock-proof. Air currents were swirling about his fingers, dark and abrasive.

"I'm not going to use you," he added, loudly. "And I don't care that I'm talking to a bitbeast. You're not a real bitbeast. You're pathetic."

"That's quite enough for tonight, I think," he heard Boris call, and then the dart hit him in the back of the neck.

* * *

He woke up in his bunk in darkness, his head throbbing. The smell of burning and electricity still clogged his throat, a bright terrible dusty smell.

This sucked.

Sleep you didn't get much of. That was the rule – as little time wasted as possible. Half an hour for breakfast, lunch and laundry; an hour for dinner. Lights out at ten and roll call at six. Most of the time you were too tired to get any sleep at all. The most important thing was that you had to stop thinking, had to stop hoping. Everyone else figured that out eventually, but Tyson hadn't yet. Tyson was being his usual obstinate self and was refusing even to begin to accept the possibility that there wouldn't be some daring escape, some spy-movie-style bust-out, some break-out involving tunnels and plastic spoons and explosions.

Tyson hadn't given up yet.

It was utterly dark in the small rooms, and they got extremely cold after a while. It was a horrible cold, deep and frightening as black water; it flooded you, filling you up with a smooth glassy heaviness. Your face began to hurt because your teeth chattered so much. Tyson lay curled on his side and glared out dry-eyed into the darkness, trying to hold his injured arm as still as possible. Sometimes when he tried to sleep it felt as though his bed were moving around underneath him, slipping around and spinning. Sometimes he felt as though it were just about to tip him over, send him tumbling out into the darkness. He growled and gritted his teeth. Stupid place like this does stuff to your head. Stupid bunch of no-good cowards, messing kids around…

Gramps, back at home…he would be…Gramps would be heartbroken. And the Chief would be taking it hardest of all. Tyson worried about Kenny the most – always had, always would. What was Kenny supposed to do without him? Who was supposed to tell him to quit worrying all the time and lighten up? Who was supposed to dare him to make prank calls to Mr Dickinson? Who was supposed to get him to stop hyperventilating whenever Emily e-mailed him? More to the point, the poor guy was probably bored out of his mind. Doing all of Tyson's homework as well as his own kept him busy, right? And however much he complained and lectured when Dragoon got bashed up, you could always tell that he _liked_ fixing it…and…and…and…

_I miss you, Chief_.

And…Kai.

Kai, here, years ago.

It would be the cold that killed him in the end. He knew that now, and he understood Kai better than ever before. This dangerous sharp-edged cold, this emptiness…this was the cold place under the ice, this was the grey static space where there was no friendship, no hatred, no light, no dark, no anything. Just yourself, just your own strength. This was what had made Kai.

With a curious mixture of misery and pride, Tyson thought wretchedly of that one boy, that one child who had hungered for power more than anything else…_hell, Kai must've been one scary little kid, imagine having to_ babysit_ him, yikes_…and to want that power, to have that glory and freedom, to be so captivated by it…and to fight so strongly, so fiercely, all for what? Power for power's sake? Or had it just been some indefinable and indomitable rebellion in that child, some steadfast arrogant knowledge that greatness lay ahead, that superiority and freedom were all that mattered?

Some kid.

Once, once, there had been a conversation: _I used to fight for empty things_, Kai had said, _I used to fight for glory. _

_And now?_ Tyson had asked. _For Dranzer, right?_

Kai had answered with _Yeah_, and with an unbearably sweet smile, because Tyson had understood him, because Tyson had known what he meant._ For love_, he had said. _For love_.

Kai hadn't had any real friends in this place…Kai had just been a kid all on his own, without even his own thoughts in his head, with only his flame of rebellion to keep him warm…but Tyson had friends. Tyson had something to fight for: the belief that he was going to get out of here, that he was going to see his precious people again. He was going to go back to Gramps, to Kenny, to Daichi. To Kai. That was the flame in his chest, the lightning that split the cold sky. That was the thread to hold to in the dark.

That was all that mattered.

* * *

You don't realise it, but hoping is what will kill you in the end.

If you push so hard and tear yourself to pieces in an effort to be free, and if that effort comes to nothing, then you have done only what they wanted you to do. You have broken yourself, irreparably and efficiently, in a manner far more finite and damaging than anything they could ever have achieved. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, they hold all the cards. You cannot win. You cannot get out.

* * *

YAY MELODRAMA.

Thanks as always for reading. Next update _might_ happen next week. Right now I need to study for my history finals, gah.


	4. IV

**Title**: The Hollow Place

**Fandom:** Beyblade

**Pairing:** Tyson/Kai

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings: **shounen-ai, violence, blah. the usual.

**Disclaimer:** Beyblade and all associated terms, characters, etc. are not mine. lyrics are from Elvis Presley's _Heartbreak Hotel_. no money is being made off this fic.

**Length:** 6 800

**Note: **woo this was written like six months ago but not posted due to internet trauma woo. sorry for the wait. and, um, if i sound like i have no experience at all with snow, it's probably because i have no experience at all with snow. also: I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO RUSSIA. I AM TOO LAZY EVEN TO GOOGLE A MAP OF MOSCOW. I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CRIME RINGS, EMBASSIES, PRESS CONFERENCES AND/OR HOW ONE HANDLES KIDNAPPING CASES. in short? i am making it all up. yay.

* * *

They began the day with complaints about the cold. Hilary woke up early on purpose, because she had experience with how to survive spending extended periods of time with a bunch of sports-mad teenage boys. She was already sitting on the sofa towelling her hair dry and yawning from jet-lag when the boys woke up and the battle for the en-suite bathroom began.

"Oh, my _Lord_, I think I have frostbite."

"H-h-hurry up in there, you g-g-guys, I'm f-f-freezing!"

"Even my _tongue_ is cold. That cannot be normal."

"No! I am staying in this shower and I am never coming out! Never! Never!"

"If you don't get out then we're coming in with you!"

"Gaack! No! Hey, get out of here!"

"Warm water! Oh, hallelujah! Warmth! My source of power!"

"Woooooooohooooooooo!"

"I'M TRYING TO SHOWER, YOU PERVERTS!"

"It's barely even winter yet, you guys," Kenny said, nervously. He was ensconced in a corner of the bathroom and already had a chilblain on his nose, but was ignoring it valiantly. "It's gonna get a lot colder, I'm afraid."

"_Well, since my baby left me, I've found a new place to dwell –_"

"Quit singing, you idiot! And what do you're think you're DOING with that? THAT'S MY LOOFAH!"

Kai had commandeered Kenny's laptop, and was e-mailing everyone he knew in Russia. Most of them were people he hated vehemently and never wanted to see again, including his father's old lawyers and several businessmen who had invested in BioVolt. That was the first step in his plan. His second step was basically to hit every location in the city that could yield any information at all. His third step involved private detectives; his fourth step involved the Mafia. He really hoped that things wouldn't have to go that far.

At eight o' clock they left the hotel. Ray was taking charge, aided by input from Kenny and occasionally stopping to consult with Kai, who answered as shortly and clearly as possible. "We split up," Ray said, as they stood around shivering underneath a lamppost, watching the traffic roar by. It was snowing lightly, the flakes scattering over the pavements, piling up grey in the gutters. "Max and Hilary take everything in that direction. Daichi and me head the opposite way. Kenny and Kai, speak to the local police, then hit the Japanese embassy and see what they can do to help. Meet back here at twelve."

"What are we looking for?" Max asked.

"Anything," Ray said, glancing briefly at Kenny to confirm. "Look, best-case scenario? If we tell the Russian police what we know and get them involved – that's assuming they aren't already – then they'll be able to handle it. Mentioning the name BioVolt should help speed things up, because I'm pretty sure no one wants them back. But we're looking, too. Just – anything."

They split up as directed. Kai was still very tired, and the old familiar coldness of the grey streets only made things worse. In spring and summer Moscow was very beautiful, full of trees and colour and sunlight, but even in early winter it was deadly and frightening. He and Kenny did not speak as they walked through the morning city. The smell of snow and rust was on the air, and pigeons passed flurrying overhead, their wings smudging ragged against the empty white sky.

They headed for the closest police station, which Kenny had located via the Internet, and informed the officers there of the situation. Kai would dearly liked to have let Kenny do the talking, but Kenny didn't speak Russian; and besides, he still felt as though this were his responsibility, that he had to do whatever he could to get Tyson back, even if it was only telling a tired sergeant at the end of his shift something that, it turned out, he already knew.

"A missing persons report on Mr Granger has been filed, and I think Interpol's handling it now," he said, when he had listened to what Kai had to say. "We were informed of it two days ago, and told that he might be in Moscow. Thanks for notifying us, yeah, but we already knew. It's kind of high-profile. You're the Beyblading kids, right? I'm sorry Granger got taken. My step-son's crazy mad on Beyblading, won't shut up about Granger this and Sumeragi that." He gave them a smile and rubbed his face; he looked as worn out as Kai felt.

"Thanks," Kai said, and they left.

They found their way to the Japanese embassy next, and waited for almost three quarters of an hour before a representative was free. Here, Kenny took over, for which Kai was grateful. He leaned back in the fancy leather armchair in front of the desk and pressed his hands into his eyes, not particularly caring anymore about decorum, while bits and pieces of Kenny's conversation made their way through to him: "He's a Japanese citizen, has been since birth…probably aware by now of the possible connection with BioVolt…yes, we're his friends and we're here in case there are any leads…thank you, yes, please keep us informed, thank you…"

They ended up having an early, silent lunch together at the restaurant of their hotel while they waited for the others to head back. Kai ordered the first thing he saw on the menu and then sat staring at his plate mutely while his food went cold; Kenny ordered only a cup of tea, and took tight little sips from it while he typed away furiously at his laptop, his eyes never leaving the screen.

After a while, Kai said, "Has anyone replied to the e-mails I sent this morning?"

"Yes," Kenny sighed, still not looking away from his computer.

"Let me read them." He frowned when Kenny didn't answer. "Please," he tried, the word almost unfamiliar. "They'll be in Russian," he added.

"Yes, and I'm running them through an online translator," Kenny informed him. "Five replies. Four of them say nothing we don't already know. The fifth is from someone called Mikhael Sevorosk – he says he was involved with BioVolt."

"He was one of my father's lawyers."

"Yes, he says that, too. Ah, he's not very polite. He says he has more information, but he wants –"

"If he's after money, then he can have it, but I'm really not interested in blackmail or con men. I remember him, and we're not trusting him."

"I agree," Kenny said. "I don't think he knows as much as he says he does. But he does mention that the old Abbey location was being refurbished at the beginning of the year, and that he worked with someone called Balthazar Ulyanovich to help straighten out the fees for some contractors –"

"That's one of Boris' aliases," Kai said.

"Ah, good. That's something to go on, then, anyway. I'm going to hack the contractors' database, see if I can pull records of any transactions – they might still have details on Ulyanovich listed, which would help."

Kai nodded. It was a start. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and let out a great shaking sigh; then hoped that Kenny wouldn't hear, wouldn't notice this weakness. He had never in his life felt as weak as this, and he didn't exactly want to advertise that fact. He had always had Tyson before now, always – Tyson had always kept him strong. Sometimes he felt as though he had spent his entire life waiting to meet Tyson, as though the first fifteen years hadn't really counted, had been full of nothing but anger and selfishness and pride, a hollow grey blur. That wasn't true, of course. He hadn't been entirely empty. He remembered his mother more clearly than his father, because she had been friendly and warm and had gotten very sad and lonely sometimes, and had loved Kai very much; he remembered with almost disturbing clarity the thrill he had felt on first seeing Black Dranzer in action.

Even so, everything had changed after Tyson.

_One thing, the one person you can never defeat…a wall that high, a place that far…one thing…_

_You don't ever get, like, nightmares, do you?_

He said, breaking the silence that had fallen between Kenny and himself, "I think we should go back to the Abbey. When the others get here. Just in case."

Kenny nodded, still not looking away; the glare of the screen bleached his face. "Definitely," he said. "It looks as though considerable sums of money were invested by this Ulyanovich person into refurbishing the old Abbey site – there's millions of roubles going into steel, concrete…the deeds to the land are in his name as well, according to the Moscow City administrative site. Supposedly he bought it from Boris a few years back, just after the fall of BioVolt."

"He probably just transferred money from one of his bank accounts to another," Kai said, dully. "He had several aliases, all of them complete with passports, bank accounts, histories – everyone high up at BioVolt was paranoid like that. Good security, too: I only found out about the Ulyanovich alias by accident, while I was with BEGA. He bought the Abbey from himself."

"That's what it looks like," Kenny agreed. "We'll tell the others." Then, surprisingly, he closed the lid of his laptop, and looked across at Kai. "You should eat," he said. "Or else get some rest."

Kai breathed out through his nose in a strange mixture of irritation and wry amusement. "You're hardly one to be lecturing me," he said.

Kenny smiled a sad little smile, and the rings under his eyes seemed for a brief moment less pronounced. "That's better," he said, softly. "Now you're sounding more like your old self."

Kai frowned, looked away across the wide dining hall. A few patrons of the hotel were scattered among the tables, talking or reading the newspaper over a light lunch. The ornate golden hands of the clock over the doorway said that it was close on twelve. "The others should be back by now," he remarked.

"He wouldn't want to see you like this," Kenny pressed. "You know he wouldn't. You need to look after yourself."

"So do you," Kai shot back. It wasn't the sort of thing he would normally have said, but he was tired, and he wanted Kenny to stop being so gentle and understanding and selfless. It made him feel like a greedy, attention-seeking toddler by comparison. "You haven't slept any more than I have, and you're no use to us if you're so out of it you can't even think straight. You're the brains of this ridiculously moronic outfit."

It came out sounding a lot meaner than he had intended, but Kenny seemed to understand that there was concern in there somewhere. He smiled again, and said, "We'll find him soon, and then everything will be better."

"No, everything will louder," Kai corrected him, under his breath and without malice.

"I miss him," Kenny continued. "He's my best friend and I love him. And I know we'll find him. He'll be safe, because even Boris won't hurt his own Beybladers; and he'll be strong, because he's Tyson."

Kai nodded, staring down at his plate of untouched food. He clenched his hands into fists on the table until his nails dug into his palms, until his knuckles started out yellow-red from his pale skin. "I never told him," he began, blind: "I never told anyone. He was – _is_, is…I just…" He stopped, swallowed; looked away.

"He told me once," Kenny said, with great kindness, "that you're his hero. I believe that. To him – you're everything." He laughed. "I used to be quite jealous. All he ever thought about was you."

Kai didn't know what to say to that. Pain was sharp-edged as glass inside him, turning and turning in his chest until he thought he would bleed to death with it. "He will be safe," he said, at last. "He will be. They don't – Boris won't hurt Tyson. If he does, I will kill him. But he won't."

Kenny opened his mouth to say something, probably something sensible about how they weren't here for revenge or personal vendettas, but at that point Ray and Daichi arrived, and Kenny fell silent, and gave them a wave.

"We go nothing," Ray said, sitting down and reaching for the menu. "Daichi spent most of his time beating up innocent street bladers, but still: nothing."

"Bunch of punks thought they could take me on," Daichi muttered, gnawing on a breadstick. "And they wouldn't tell us anything about that Boris creepo, either. So I had to teach 'em a lesson."

"Yeah, a lesson in how to run away screaming after two rounds," Ray sighed. "Shut up, Daichi. Are Max and Hil back yet?"

Kenny shook his head, and then said, "We've got something that might help, though. I'll wait till everyone's here to tell you."

"Good man," Ray said, laying a hand on his shoulder briefly.

"It's not much," Kenny warned him.

"Every little helps. Daichi, leave the breadsticks alone."

One failed attempt at converting breadsticks into light-sabres later, Hilary and Max entered the dining-hall, looking very cold and irritable. Hilary had snow melting in her hair; Max had, it appeared, loaned her his jacket in a fit of gallantry, and was shivering. They sat down, and Kenny opened his laptop again and explained to them what he and Kai had theorised. "We think we should go to the Abbey as soon as possible," he finished. "This afternoon, I think. About a third of the old building was demolished, but the rest of it still stands, and is entirely the property of Ulyanovich, a.k.a. Boris. That, when added to the fact that a lot of money has supposedly just been spent on developing the area, is reason enough for suspicion."

"Alright," Max said. "Nice work, Chief. So, for this afternoon's entertainment: the lairs of the rich and super-villainous! Should be fun."

"It's not _fun_," Kenny pointed out, nervously. "This is serious business, Max."

"Relax, Chief," Ray said, as he must have said several times already that day, and more times than bore counting over the past week. "As long as we don't act stupid and let our guard down while we're there, there's not much that can happen." A thought appeared to strike him. "Uh, I don't suppose we could get arrested for trespassing, could we?"

"Ahhh, why'd you have to say that?" Kenny wailed, putting his head down on the table. "Now we're _doomed_."

"More likely to get arrested for disturbing the peace with this bunch," Max snorted. "But be not worried, my friends! We have the invincible charm of the great Hiwatari on our side! One look from those smouldering ruby eyes and any bodacious police officer worth her badge will be as putty in our hands."

"Oh, EW! Where did _that _come from?" Hilary yelped. "Keep your little perversions to yourself, please."

"Yeah, and if they involve Kai's ruby eyes then I _really_ don't want to know," Ray agreed. "Then again, if that's what floats your boat…"

"You guys are being dirty again, aren't you?" Daichi enquired, eyes moving suspiciously from Max to Ray. "Girls. Yuck."

"Ah, just you wait, my young friend," Ray said, smirking. "One of these days, you will understand."

"I'm sure Mariah wouldn't be pleased if I told her that you and Max spend your time cooking up obscenities about Russian policewomen," Hilary sniffed.

"Ah, Mariah knows that I'm a free spirit," Ray cackled, and pressed a hand to his heart. "I can't be tied down to just one woman."

"I could make bondage jokes, but I won't, because then Hilary will hit me," Max put in.

"It's a terrible fate to be such a henpecked husband," Ray remarked. "Then again, seeing as it's Hilary, I really can't blame you."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?" Hilary screeched.

"Well, let's just say that I don't think that Max has the testosterone market cornered in your relationship," Ray smirked.

Daichi guffawed; Hilary slapped him on the shoulder, and then gave Max similar treatment. "And I'd kick your ass too, if I could reach you," she informed Ray. "Kenny, please discipline Ray for me."

Kenny quailed.

"Gimme your best shot, Chief," Ray said. "C'mon, hit me."

"I'm not cut out for this kind of thing," Kenny sighed.

"Coward," Hilary sniffed, and poked him disapprovingly in the shoulder.

They went back up to their hotel rooms shortly after lunch. Kenny, Hilary and Daichi shared one; Max, Ray and Kai the other. Ray had bought a map of Moscow during the morning's reconnaissance, and spread it out over the bed as soon as they entered their room, and began poring over it. "Daichi and me didn't get much information," he said to Max, who still trying brush the melting snow out of his hair. "I forgot to ask; did you two find anything?"

"Nope," Max said. "Probably to do with the fact that I know about four words of Russian."

"And that you pronounce all of them wrong," Kai agreed, from where he was lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying not to drift off. Jet-lag was not helping the fact that he had spent twelve hours at most out of the past sixty asleep.

"Wow, look at the ego inflating," Max grumped, sitting down on the floor with a thud and starting to pull off his heavy outdoor boots. "I tried English and we got somewhere with that, but still, no one knew anything."

"I doubt that you'll get anything much out of street bladers," Kai said. "If going to the Abbey this afternoon doesn't help then I suggest we either contact a private investigator or start making use of my Mafia connections."

Max laughed; Ray grinned, but did not look up from his map.

"I was being serious about that. Voltaire knew a lot of people. Killed a lot of them, and ripped a lot of the rest of them off. But you don't put together an operation like BioVolt without government assistance _and_ help from the Mafia."

"Geez," Ray said. "That's kind of…creepy. If it's all the same to you, I think we'll stick with the private investigator option."

"Ah, no fair!" Max whined. "The Mafia's _cool_."

"Yeah, kidnapping, extortion and murder," Kai commented, tiredly. "Like, wow! So awesome!"

"Spoilsport," Max said, and threw a boot at Kai. Kai caught it easily, but declined retaliation. He put it down on the carpeted floor and folded his arms behind his head.

"Aw, don't mind him, Maxie," Ray teased. "He's trying to be sociable, that's all."

"Better late than never," Max said

Kai was already closing his eyes.

* * *

"_You don't ever get, like, nightmares, do you?" Tyson said. His voice was light and casual. His eyes were wary._

"_Why would I have nightmares?" Kai asked, rolling his eyes._

"_I dunno, maybe about that time when Hilary painted your nails." Tyson gave him a lopsided grin, but he was still casual, still cautious. "Ah, that was the best. Truth or dare, baby: it's a _man's_ game!"_

"_You hid the nail polish remover afterwards," Kai said, and glared at Tyson. "Apparently honour isn't your forte."_

"_Why would we provide you with the means of destroying art?"_

"_It wasn't art."_

"_You gotta admit it was good, though, dude. With the little flower stickers and everything." He batted his eyelashes. "Matched those big beautiful eyes of yours. And that darling cashmere scarf."_

"_You're a freak."_

"_And yet! Adored by millions." The shifty look came back into his eyes. "But, just checking: no nightmares, right? Noooo scary nightmares for poor innocent little Kai?"_

_Kai yawned. "Why would I have nightmares?" he said again. "Keep your mouth shut unless you can say something worth my time, you moron."_

_And that was when Tyson said, his eyes low, his shoulders hunched almost defensively, "You don't ever dream about – back there?"_

_That was always how Tyson referred to the Abbey: back there. Kai didn't know why. He didn't mind Tyson saying it. "No," he said. "I don't dream much at all." He hadn't intended to say anything else, but before he could stop himself, he added, curtly, "Don't act like it's a crime to talk about it."_

_Tyson said, very quietly, "I don't like thinking about it. About you there. That's all."_

_Perfectly calm, not looking Tyson in the eye: "It happened. But it's not happening now. And it won't happen ever again."_

_In a hurry: "Those were my nightmares. That you guys were going away. That you were all leaving me 'cause I wasn't good enough for you." He swallowed, laughed. "Kinda over it now. Haven't had dreams like that in ages. But, that time on the ice, that – that was kinda bad. Sorta. You know." He laughed again, louder, and got to his feet, reaching down to pull Kai up. "Ooookay! Enough touchy-feely stuff, bro. We should get back to training."_

_Kai gripped Tyson's hand, stood up. For one moment their eyes met, and then Tyson looked away, clearly embarrassed. He didn't like big emotional revelations anymore than Kai did. He was very red in the face. Kai strode past him, picked up Dranzer from where he had left it lying next to Dragoon and Driger. "I'm not," he said, steadily, as he loaded the ripcord, "going anywhere. I'm not walking out on you ever again."_

"_Yeah, I know," Tyson said, sounding a little relieved. "Um. Come on, then. Let's. You know. Let it rip."_

* * *

"You'd think he'd get bored after a while, wouldn't you? Sheesh, doesn't he guy ever quit?"

"You haven't won the final boss battle till you've beaten him twice _and_ the lair has caved in," Max's voice said, sagely. "Well-known fact. If the place doesn't come crashing down or explode then he's not dead. And sometimes not even then, if a sequel is needed."

"Boris is desperate, probably," Kenny said. "This is probably his last chance. He put everything into BEGA; I don't know where he got the funds for this new project. Embezzlement of some BEGA's profits before its fall, maybe, but that's just speculation. I don't actually know."

Kai sat up, blearily. He glanced at the bedside table before remembering that he was in a hotel, not at the dojo or in his lonely little apartment. "What's the time?" he asked, pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead, stretching his shoulders until they clicked.

"Half-past four," Hilary called. "Kai, come see this, it just got announced."

He rolled off the bed and almost squashed Daichi, who was sitting on the floor fiddling with Strata Dragoon. "Get off me, you weirdo!" Daichi yelled. "Just 'cause you're always stalking Tyson doesn't mean you have to start stalking me, too!"

"Oi! Respect your elders, you juvenile delinquent!" Hilary snapped at him. "Kai, come _see_!"

They were all crowded on Ray's bed, peering at Kenny's laptop. "It's a recording of a webcast, a press statement," Kenny said, rewinding the footage. "It was released about an hour ago in Japan."

The video was a recording of a press conference. Tyson's elder brother Hiro, flanked by Mr Dickinson and two other BBA officials that Kai recognised vaguely, was speaking into a microphone, face bathed in the light from constant camera flashes. He looked pale, and there were deep circles under his eyes. Seemed that everyone was feeling the pressure these days. _"I regret to announce the abduction, yesterday afternoon, of Garland Siebold. I would like to emphasise that this is only the latest in a chain of abductions, including those of my brother, Tyson Granger, and my student Brooklyn."_

"_Do we have any exact figures as to how many bladers have allegedly been abducted?"_ asked a reporter from the audience.

"_At least seven in Japan, both well-established bladers and lesser-known newcomers. Reports from across the globe suggest that the total could be anywhere between twenty and thirty,"_ Hiro answered.

"_Speculation is rife that this marks the return of BioVolt, possibly spearheaded by Balkovich; is this true?"_

"_Ahem,"_ Mr Dickinson said, taking over from Hiro. He wiped his forehead nervously, blinking in the glare of the camera flashes. _"I would like to state that the BBA is doing everything in its power to deduce the whereabouts of these young bladers, who are all valuable members of the international beyblading community, and to ensure their safe return. We are working together with Interpol and welcome any information that can be given us. Also, I must stress that there is no evidence at all that points to the involvement of Boris Balkovich, and that BioVolt has been out of business for years."_

"_And Kai Hiwatari? How is he involved with this?"_

Onscreen, Mr Dickinson frowned. _"Kai, along with several other members, past and present, of Japan's current title-holding team the Bladebreakers, is currently in Russia, or so we believe."_

"_Yes, but wasn't he one of BioVolt's top students during its heyday? And he remains the sole heir to the Hiwatari fortune, large portions of which were invested in BioVolt by his grandfather?"_

"_Voltaire Hiwatari was the founder of BioVolt, yes,_" Mr Dickinson said, looking rather affronted. "_However, Kai also suffered at the hands of BioVolt. He is not in any way involved with the current kidnappings. He is a very close personal friend of Tyson Granger, and would never ally himself with any enterprise that would bring harm to Tyson or any of his fellow Beybladers_."

"That's enough," Ray said, sharply, and leaned over to close the window. "So, they're moving fast. Twenty or thirty, they said. That's bad."

"I think we should go," Kai said, moving to the door to the room. He didn't care what anyone thought. "Let's go. Now."

* * *

Thankfully, the snow had tailed off. They took a taxi downtown, and got out a few blocks before the Abbey. That was Ray's idea. "So paranoid," Max snorted.

The late afternoon would have been lighter had the sun not already disappeared behind the city buildings and begun to sink into a deep bank of cloud on the horizon. Every now and then a car would whoosh past, throwing snow and freezing grey mud up over the pavement and invariably drenching Max and Daichi, who were walking closest to the road. Other than that the place was largely silent. The distant roar of the busy city centre was muted by the snow, and most people were indoors or at work, apart from a few children running about in the snow on the steps of an apartment building across the road.

The six of them trudged along, making occasional remarks about the cold, or trying to crack jokes. They had begun the day as cheerfully as possible, but reality seemed to be setting in now. Hilary had fallen silent; Kenny had fallen silent. Daichi looked a lot smaller than usual, and scowled down at the icy pavement, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. Kai fretted.

And then they were there. A contractor's billboard was hung on the wall, and the old rusty gates were padlocked with a thick new chain, but other than that there was no sign of any renovations at all. The grounds were bleak, covered with hard-packed snow that must have been days old, and the buildings rose iron-dark against the white air.

"Caaaaw, caaaw," Max croaked, in a very desperate attempt at humour. "Hello, we need some creepy ravens! Where are the creepy ravens?"

"There's a starling's nest up there," Kenny supplied, without much enthusiasm.

Ray and Kai shared a glance, and then Ray knelt down and locked his hands together. "You first," he said to Kai. "Maxie, you help Kenny up. Hilary and Daichi, you get Max over, but then you stay behind."

"Hey, no fair!" Daichi protested.

"I'm coming too," Hilary said, angrily. "I am."

"You're not," Kai told her. "You don't have a blade for protection, and Daichi is too young."

"I am not!" Daichi snapped immediately. "Say that to my face, you jerk!"

Kai had already put his boot in Ray's gloved hands and was swinging himself over the gate. He balanced at the top for a moment and then turned around and dropped straight down. He landed badly, turning his ankle, but had to hobble out of the way as soon as he could, for Ray had followed close behind him. Kenny came third, stumbling as he tried to leap down; Ray caught him. Max came last.

Then they turned and faced the two left outside.

"You bunch of creeps," Daichi was muttering sullenly. "Get all the fun. It's not _right_."

"And what are we supposed to do, anyway?" Hilary demanded. "Stand around attracting attention? Yeah, _great_ plan, you guys. Really excellent."

"Aw, c'mon, Hil, lighten up," Max said. "You guys are on stake-out! You have to stand guard in case anyone shows up!"

"And then what, get kidnapped? 'Cause apparently we can't look after ourselves just 'cause we aren't Beyblading superheroes?"

"No, you're supposed to stay out of sight and phone us if you see anyone acting suspicious. Maxie and me have got our phones. So you call us and then call the police. And then –"

"Get out of the way, yeah, we got it," Hilary snapped. "Sure. Fine. Whatever." She grabbed Daichi's arm and dragged him away. He pulled a face at Max as he went.

"It doesn't look like there's any security," Kenny said, as they crossed the snowy yard to the main doors. "I can't do a sweep without more equipment, but I don't see anything. There're no visible electricity supply to the building: look, the power cables just go right by. And we'd definitely hear a generator."

"So, no electricity, no security," Ray said. "That's good."

"Uh, no electricity, no _people_," Max corrected him. He looked up at the doors, and shuddered visibly. "Gah, mega-creepy. Remember the last time we were here?"

"Back when I skipped out on you," Kai supplied, neutrally. It was better if he said it; everyone was thinking it.

"Yeah, way back," Ray agreed, pointedly. "First time we bladed against Tala, wasn't it?"

It _was_ creepy. Kai had forgotten it once, but had, unfortunately, been unable to do so a second time. Frowning, he stepped forward and gave the doors a push; they swung inward easily, opening into darkness with barely a complaint from the hinges. "No rust," he remarked, his voice perfectly steady. "The building isn't actually in such bad shape. It hasn't been neglected."

"I don't see any signs of construction, though," Max said. "There isn't even any scaffolding or anything. Yo, Chief, did you manage to pull dates on how long this construction has been going on?"

"It's only due to start next week, actually," Kenny said. His glasses were fogged up with cold, and he had a thick warm hat pulled down close over his ears, but he was still bright pink, and his teeth chattered loudly. "According to the dates in their database."

"We've only got circumstantial evidence at best," Ray sighed. "We're pretty sure Boris is in possession of the place, but other than that everything's fine. Nothing wrong with the guy owning property and doing a bit of renovation."

"We go in," Kai said, flatly. He wasn't using half-measures with anything now; and once here, once standing on the threshold, he wasn't turning back. Tyson had gotten him out of this place before, and he needed to return the favour. There was a hot, dark daring in his throat, a knowledge that this had to be done.

The second he stepped inside, he almost regretted it. The darkness was almost absolute, as the old stone walls were close and cold, with few windows. "Hang on a sec, you guys," Kenny piped up, and a thin filmy beam of light spread out in front of them, ghosting over the paved floor.

"Attaboy, Chief," Ray grinned, clapping him on the back. "Right." Then his voice marginally more cautious: "Hey, uh – so, Kai, do you know where we're heading?"

Kai actually had to swallow before answering, and was unpleasantly surprised at himself. _Stronger than this_. "Into the main quad," he said. "That's the best place to look around. And from there we can check the cellars."

With light it wasn't so bad, but even the smell was enough to unsettle him. He still hated closed-in places, hated not being able to see the grass and the sun, and it was a hatred that had been born here, in this dank horrible place under the low grey Moscow sky. It was the noise of the wind streaming down the passageways that was the worst: a thin blue sound in the blackness, poisonous and rustling. Dry eyes dead and aching with exhaustion in the unearthly hours of early morning; cold that seeped right down, right down into your bones and made you into black glass.

"This place freaks me out," Max said, unhappily.

"Tell me about it," Ray agreed. "Hey, Kai, you sure you know where we're going?"

Kai nodded, realised that Ray wouldn't be able to see in the semi-dark, and cleared his throat to speak. "Yes," he said. "There's a door coming up on the right. I know where we are."

"Good, 'cause I _really _don't want to get lost in here," Max said.

"Weird how the last time we came here it was with Tyson, and we were rescuing Kai."

"Not weird. They take one of us, we go in and we get our buddy back. That's how it works."

They were moving together in a tight-knit group now, almost huddling close. Kai, on realising this, immediately quickened his pace – he didn't want to have to depend on anyone for comfort, had to be able to face this on his own. _Stupid egotistical show-off_, the Tyson in his head said, except that Tyson wouldn't have said _egotistical_. He would have said _selfish_ instead.

_Do you want power, boy?_

_Power enough to defeat every single person who stands in your way? Power enough to take him down: the one person you can never reach, the one who is always too far away? You could have the power to show him the truth, to prove yourself to him – the power to make him see you, to make him feel how you have always felt –_

_You are only a boy. You are not a man, and you have no power of your own. He is too far beyond you – he will never look back at you, will not bother with you –_

They found the door easily enough, but when Kai turned the handle it was locked. Kenny shone the torch on it, revealing a heavy combination lock that looked very new. "Stand back," Ray said, grimly, pulling Driger from his pocket. There came a whirr as he loaded it onto the ripcord, and then sparks jumped in the darkness and the padlock fell to the ground with a _clank!_ that echoed in the darkness.

"That was also new," Kenny commented, as they tramped out into the courtyard. "Strange."

At this point, a short burst of synthesised music rang out, echoing sharply in the frosty air. Ray swore, and clapped his hand to the pocket of his anorak, struggling with his gloved fingers. "Forgot – to put it on silent – damn it –" he muttered, finally managing to fish out his phone. He flipped it open, said, "Hello? Hilary?"

Her voice could easily be heard. "_Someone went in! Get out of there! A car drew up and four guys went inside –_"

At almost exactly the same time, muffled voices could be heard from across the courtyard, speaking in Russian. Kai heard them. They said: "Who broke the lock?"

* * *

tbc, tee hee. thanks for reading, my pretties.


	5. V

**Title**: The Hollow Place

**Fandom:** Beyblade

**Pairing:** Tyson/Kai

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings: **shounen-ai, plus quite a bit of violence in this one, along with guns. plus, as a bonus, fake moral dilemmas. gasp.

**Disclaimer:** Beyblade and all associated terms, characters, etc. are not mine. no money is being made off this fic.

**Length:** 8 100

**Note: **i know it's not possible to hack a security keypad thingamajiggy. sue me. also this one is very anvilicious and rabbits on about self-defence and violence and war what is it good for? and etc. this is solely because i am trying to make the characters somewhat less sociopathic than myself. DO NOT TAKE ANY OF IT SERIOUSLY.

**Other Note:** haha i have internet again. after, like, what, a year? sigh. gave up on this fic ages ago, just posting what chapters already exist.

* * *

Tyson woke a second before the rising bell, and lay still as it rang. His arm ached worse than ever: it was starting to swell badly, and when he poked tentatively at the bandaging, he could feel the heat of the infection through the cloth. He didn't unbandage it. He didn't want to look at it. It would be fine. It would. He'd bladed with way worse, _and_ won. He wasn't about to let some stupid little scratch slow him down.

There was a thick, muggy feeling at the back of his throat, and his teeth ached. For a moment, as he rolled over onto his stomach to stare at the cement floor, he felt a buzz go through him. Somewhere, he could still feel Black Dragoon. It had seen him, and it had known him. He had the sneaky suspicion that it needed him, that it wanted him to make it work. He missed Dragoon more than ever.

Someone rattled on his door. "Up!" a voice yelled. "Now! Immediately!"

"Coming, coming," he muttered, and sat up.

* * *

"Cellars," Kai said. Dranzer was already in his hand. "Cellars, now. Come."

They would leave footprints in the snow, but that couldn't be helped. Flakes were drifting down quickly, but not quickly enough. Kai led the way to a doorway set into the western wing. Padlocked again. He took aim with Dranzer, fired; the lock melted, fell dripping to the snow.

"Well, that's not conspicuous," Ray hissed as they hurried inside.

"Better here than in plain sight," Kenny said; they were racing down a flight of narrow stone stairs now in what was almost total darkness. "We're sitting ducks out there."

"And we're as good as trapped in here," Ray argued. "Is there at least another way out?"

"No."

Ray made a sound of exasperation, but Kenny cut in: "We can ambush them if we wait at the bottom – the stairs are narrow, and they'll be at a disadvantage. So we need to be quiet."

Max almost tripped as the stairs ended, stumbling forwards; from above came voices. Kai snapped on a light to reveal a small room stacked high with crates and cardboard boxes; in the far wall was another door, this one of stainless steel, protected by padlock and security camera. That hadn't been there before.

"Security camera," Kenny pointed out. "Careful. We need to hide. Now."

Kai immediately headed for a pile of crates near the stainless steel door, intending to be as close to the security camera as possible in case he needed to shoot it out; but Ray had the same idea and got there first, so Kai settled for crouching up against the wall in the shadows between two teetering piles of rusty scrap metal and planking.

The first person to enter the room was Garland, blindfolded and unsteady on his feet. A tall, powerfully-built man with dark red hair gripped his arm. In Russian, he called up the stairs, "Lights are on. Careful."

A second man followed him in. He cast around the room briefly, then said, in an undertone, "It _is_ the kids from Japan after all. I can see two of 'em. They can't understand us. Go stand under the security camera, give the alert. Pretend to open the door but do not let them in."

Kai stepped calmly from his hiding place, took aim, and shot out the security camera. Before he could turn and aim at the man, what felt awfully like the barrel of a gun was pressed to the softness at the base of his skull: icy-cold against his skin.

"Thank you very much," said one of the men. "Honestly, Hiwatari, I thought you were intelligent. Excellent aim, though."

"Everyone out where I can see!" the red-haired man roared in broken Japanese, striding past Kai. "Beyblade on ground, hands up!"

"Nice, Kai," Ray snapped, peering around the edge of a stack of crates. "Really nice."

"How many here?" the red-haired man asked.

"Just us two," Kai said. "The others have been instructed to call the police if we don't return from Russia within a week."

"Well, that's plenty of time," the other man said; his Japanese was much more fluent. "And I can see you there, in that corner. And you. Out. Now."

Max and Kenny emerged.

"Tate, Kon, and the engineer kid. They're on the list, am I right?" the red-haired man said, in Russian.

"Yes. We take them. But he's not interested in Hiwatari this time."

"Can't be. He was an original, back in the day. I've been here longer than you."

"He's not on the list, Kuleshov. We kill him."

"Yeah, but –"

"ALRIGHT, YOU BASTARDS! STICK 'EM UP! WE HAVE THE PLACE SURROUNDED!"

"Oh, dear Lord, have mercy," Kenny whispered, covering his eyes with his hands.

Daichi charged down the stairs, Strata Dragoon levelled. "Back away from Kai and nobody gets hurt!" he yelled. "I'm warnin' ya, I'm Tyson Granger's official tag team partner, and I'm gonna kick some ass!"

"Who the hell are you?" Kuleshov demanded.

"I'm your worst nightmare, punk," Daichi informed him, lifting his chin. "Now drop the gun!"

"Kid, I don't know if you've thought about this much," the other man said, pressing the gun more firmly against Kai's head, "but no matter what you do, Hiwatari dies."

"You shoot him, I shoot you," Daichi shrugged. "So you better not touch him! Oi, Chief, what's it called when there's two people and either way it's gonna hurt both of 'em? Like, the one guy can't take the other down 'cause the other guy'll take him down too, and the other guy can't take the first guy down 'cause the first guy'll get him?"

"Um – a stalemate?" the Chief suggested, in a quavering voice.

"Yeah, it's one of those!"

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Kuleshov muttered in Russian, and strode forward.

Three things happened at once. Daichi pulled the ripcord and whooped, "Let it rip!" – Kai hurled himself to the side, ducked round and rammed his shoulder into his captor's back – and the room went white with the force of Daichi's attack. Blind, Kai stumbled, crashed into the man, and started fumbling desperately for the gun. After-images were jittering wildly in his eyes, and his head was ringing; the man was underneath him, one hand clawing at his throat, the other clutching the gun, which rattled against the floor as Kai held the man's wrist down.

The man kicked Kai hard in the stomach, and he doubled over, winded. The next second the gun was tucked neatly under his chin.

He heard a click.

"Back off," Ray's voice said.

The gun slid from the man's grasp, across Kai's throat and to the floor. Kai sprang to his feet, breathing hard, to see Ray, Max and Daichi, Beyblades at the ready. Kuleshov was lying sprawled on his back, bleeding profusely from a Beyblade wound to the head.

"I don't have access to the security codes," the man said, smoothly, keeping his hands raised. "Kuleshov's higher up than me. I can't get you in. And I don't think you're likely to kill me, either."

"Yeah, 'cause we're not like you," Max agreed. "'Sides, getting in's not a problem. Chief?"

"Give me a minute," Kenny called, hurrying over to the keypad. "Sheesh. It's more than just pushing buttons, you know. And nobody kill anybody, alright?"

In the corner, Garland stirred and moaned. "Oh, hey," Max said, hurrying over to him and pulling off his blindfold. "Forgot about you. How're you feeling, man?"

"Like hell," Garland informed him, rubbing his forehead woozily. "What is going on here?"

"What's going on is that we're kicking kidnapper butt!" Daichi whooped.

"Oh, God, it's you clowns. Quit yelling, it's going right through my head."

"Hey, we just saved your life, you long-haired freak!"

"Can you people keep your Martian under control, please? Urgh, I feel sick." He leaned back against the wall briefly, wiped his face. "Hey, Tate, are these the guys that took Brooklyn?"

"Yeah, and they took Tyson, too," Max said, grimly. "And now we're going to get him back."

"Speaking of Tyson," Kai broke in, addressing the man, "I really hope, for your own sake, that you didn't miss out on so many promotions that you can't tell us _why_ you're kidnapping people."

"I'm not telling you anything," the man said, flatly. "What're you going to do, call the police? You've taken out the surveillance camera, geniuses – no evidence of anything. So I'm in the company of a missing Beyblader, so what? Means nothing. I'm a Russian citizen and a high-standing businessman. You can't touch me."

It was then that Kai picked up the gun.

* * *

"You OK?" Brooklyn asked, as he always did when Tyson came into the mess hall in the morning. "Arm?"

"It's only a flesh wound."

Brooklyn smiled. "That," he said, "is the spirit. Have a gold star."

"I will if it's edible. I swear, I'd rather eat _Daichi_'s cooking than this gunk."

"We're scheduled for training together today," Brooklyn said, after a bit. "Morning session, straight after breakfast. Apparently it's an exhibition match for potential investors."

Tyson gave a loud snort. "Yeah, to show off their messed-up new mutant blade. Boris is such a dumbass."

"Come again?"

"That's what my remedials was last night. They've got Black Dragoon now. Trying to get me to use it."

Brooklyn absorbed that information. He had gone rather pale; the deep circles under his eyes stood out sharply. "I don't think you should tell anyone else," he said, finally. "If you're not going to use it, then it's better that no one else does, either."

"OK, OK."

Brooklyn looked nervously over his shoulder, but they were alone at their end of the table, except for Haruka and Johnny, who were glowering together about something a little way off. "And you're not going to use it at all?"

"Do I look like some kind of – of no-good power-hungry disloyal _freak_? Is that it?" Tyson spluttered, outraged. "I have a bitbeast, OK? Don't need another one, thanks all the same." He tried to fold his arms behind his head nonchalantly, but couldn't; it hurt too much. He changed the motion into a stretch instead, which still hurt, and frowned. He added, "Besides, I saw what Black Dranzer did to Kai."

"Taking other people's bitbeasts can hardly be called good etiquette, I agree," Brooklyn said, lightly. "And he defected from your team almost on the eve of the World Championships, as I recall?"

"It wasn't his fault," Tyson said, instantly. "It wasn't fair on him. He was a kid, just this lonely kid, and they'd messed around with his head so much he didn't even have a choice. I mean, back then – I saw him, saw what it was like for him! We all wanted to be the strongest, sure – but then they go and offer him that, they offer him that chance! What was he gonna do, say no? He didn't – he didn't really think of us as his buddies then, not like he does now – he didn't see it as betraying us."

"It's in the past," Brooklyn comforted him. "Water under the bridge, right?"

"Still pisses me off – messing around with people like that. Hello, Beyblading's a sport! It's for _fun_! Not the money, or the power. Bunch of jerks. I hate them all."

"What are you going to –"

"I'm gonna tell 'em that if they think I'm using any of their crappy blades then they can forget about it." Tyson pushed his plate away and leaned forward, putting his chin on the table and sighing. It still felt weird not to be wearing his cap. He wondered where it had gotten to – they had taken it and everything else away on his arrival. "I just want to go home," he said. "This place blows."

"On the bright side, if any more bladers get taken someone'll have to do something sooner or later," Brooklyn pointed out. "It has to be pretty obvious by now that Boris is involved somehow."

"Everyone thought he was gone after BEGA," Tyson replied morosely, yawning. "_I_ thought he was gone after BEGA. Stupid bastard. Can't believe you ever worked for him." Then he winced. "Sorry, man, didn't mean it in a bad way. Dead tired, that's all." He yawned again. "At least he's not still after Kai. That would be really bad."

"You talk about Kai a lot, you know that?"

Horribly, Tyson felt himself flush. "So what?" he demanded. "Hey, we've had this conversation. Straight male friend, remember?"

"Mm, I remember. But you're in love with him anyway."

Tyson sat up slowly, turned his face away. "So what?" he repeated, swallowing.

"Just pointing it out," Brooklyn said, mildly. "In case you hadn't realised it yet."

"I – I realised it – round about the first time I ever met him," Tyson managed to get out, and even remembering that made his stomach clench. "Look, I don't talk about being – about it," he added, his voice a bit choppy and rough. "I mean, Maxie knows 'cause I was freaked out and I needed to talk to someone, and he was the only person around, but no one else. Not 'cause I don't trust my friends, not 'cause I think any of you guys would act weird about it, just 'cause – 'cause it's not that important, OK? It's not the most important thing about me, not the – not something that everyone has to know. Not yet."

"Does Kai know?"

"Don't tell him!" Tyson yelped, swinging around to face Brooklyn in a panic. "You _cannot_ tell him! Dude, seriously, I – I'm _serious_! If you tell him, I swear I will personally kick your ass from here to the end of forever. Are you – hey, quit it! Quit laughing!"

"I'm not laughing," Brooklyn said, laughing.

"Dirty rotten no-good interfering weirdo," Tyson muttered. He was still very pink. "I'm gonna get you for this." He hunched over, shot a sidelong glance at Brooklyn, and then muttered, to change the subject, "So, um, uh, what kind of fun and games d'you think they have planned for us today?"

It was at precisely that point that Boris entered the room and answered Tyson's question.

* * *

The gun was surprisingly light, much lighter than he had expected, and very cold. Gingerly, he slid his finger into position over the trigger, feeling as though the entire thing could explode at any given moment, and tapped it lightly against the man's temple. "You've taken our friends," he said; he could feel his cheeks going hot, partly from fury and partly from shame under the gaze of the others, but he didn't care. His hand was perfectly steady. His heart was pounding. "We are going to get them back. We would appreciate any information you can give us, starting with where Tyson is and how we can find him."

All around there was dead silence. Kenny had stopped working on the security keypad and was standing stock-still, mouth hanging open. Kai didn't look at him, or at anyone else. His arm started to shake; he gripped it with his free hand.

The man turned slightly on his knees, turned until the gun was pressed dead into the centre of his forehead so that he could look up at Kai. His eyes – brown, brown like Tyson's, although not at all like Tyson's because no one else in the world could ever have eyes like his, eyes like autumn, like late light over the rooftops – met Kai's, held their gaze. There was faint sarcasm on his broad pale face, but sincerity in his voice. "You're not going to hurt me," he said. "You know you're not. You don't have it in you. You're here looking for your friend, aren't you? For Granger. What's going to say when he hears you've killed someone just to find him?"

"Kai, stop it," Max said, sharply. "We don't have time for this, OK?"

"We don't have time for _this_!" Kai snapped, pressing the gun harder into the man's forehead. "I want information and I want it now, please."

"I've had it with you, Kai!" Ray shouted. "You've been nothing but a liability this entire time! You refuse to work with us, you're off in your own little world, you act like you're the only one suffering! I cannot believe you are doing this. I really thought I knew you better."

"I hate guns," Kai told him, never looking away from the man's eyes. "I hate them. You know I do. But we need to stop playing around. You think they won't be armed? You honestly think we can go in there and expect to live if we're not prepared?"

"Tyson wouldn't –"

"Tyson is the person I am trying to save! And I don't care what it takes!"

"You really are pathetic without him around, you know that?"

"Stop it!" Kenny shouted, his voice shrill. "Stop it, all of you! We don't need him, Kai! I can get us in easily, I can hack the mainframe in about two seconds – just leave him alone!"

Kai stood there a moment more, but he already knew that he was defeated. There was a light of smug but genuine satisfaction in the man's eyes, and Kai had to look away, feeling, ridiculously, as though he were weak. The man had read him easily and had been proved right; Kai had bluffed and had lost.

He changed his hold on the gun and brought the butt of the handgrip down hard against the man's temple. Brown eyes rolled back horribly, and the man slumped.

"Right," Ray said, stepping forward instantly and bending over the man, unzipping his heavy anorak and starting to search the pockets. "Has he got a cell phone? Or an ID card or something? Maxie, you search the other guy. Take anything we can use and disarm him if necessary. Daichi, can find any rope in this place? There's got to be some somewhere."

"I'm in," Kenny called. He sounded on the edge of tears. "I've got the code. We're in."

"Just a sec," Ray said, as Daichi handed him a heavy spool of rough red rope. "Kai, give me a hand."

Together, Ray and Kai tied the two men up and dragged them up against the wall. Kai's fingers were shaking, but he tried not to let anyone see. He kept his eyes down. _Stronger than this_, he repeated to himself over and over again, _stronger than anything, stronger than everything_, _as strong as you have to be for him:_ but he didn't know which kind of strength was the right kind anymore. He was going off the rails badly.

_Tyson_…

They found a heavy sheet of metal leaning against one of the walls. It took all five of them to lift it, and when they had settled it on top of the men, it restrained them without being harmful. Kuleshov was waking up now, flickering his eyes and groaning; the wound on his head was no longer bleeding quite so severely, and he looked healthy enough.

"You guys going in?" Garland asked.

"No, we have reservations for dinner, maybe a spot of sight-seeing afterwards," Kai said. He was still shaking, which only served to put him in a very bad mood. He wasn't ashamed. He was angry. He was angry at Ray for not understanding, for not realising what had to be done. He didn't want to have to be the bad guy on the team, the nutcase, the weak link. That wasn't him: it never had been. It was just that no one else seemed to understand that people got hurt in real life, and that not every arch-villain was interested in staking dominion of the free world on the outcome of a Beyblading match.

Garland raised an eyebrow at him, and then said, "Get a grip on yourself. I'm offering to stay here and keep watch, that's all."

"That would be good," Ray said, taking charge effortlessly. "Thanks. Chief, what's the plan?"

"If we can set off any kind alarm, that might be useful," Kenny said. "Should be pretty easy – a fire alarm or something, something that would get everyone confused. Or we could always wait for the police."

"Eh, boring," Max said, risking a grin. "Uh, speaking of the police and people who were supposed to phone them, where's Hil?"

And, far too late but perfectly on cue, Hilary came tumbling down the stairs with her eyes tightly closed and her fists raised. "I've got a black belt and I'm not afraid to use it!" she yelled. And then, looking around, "Gah, Daichi, you little idiot! You were supposed to give me the signal!"

"Oh. Yeah." Daichi shrugged. "Knew I forgot something."

"I thought you'd all been kidnapped or something! You IDIOT! What's the point of being back-up if the numbskull you're supposed to back up forgets about you? There I was, freaking out over NOTHING – oh! Hi, Garland! You OK?"

"Fine," Garland sighed. "I'm just great. Surrounded by a bunch of inept kids, but fine nonetheless."

"Aw, you know you love us really!" Max grinned. The tension had dissolved, and he was doing his best to keep it that way.

"I'm starting to think Hiro was right about you guys. Insane, the lot of you. Good bladers, but insane."

"Hey, he can't say that! That's hurtful!"

"Guys, guys, come _on_," Kenny insisted, hopping anxiously from foot to foot. "They'll have noticed the security camera's out by now – we have to hurry –"

"Alright, alright. Let's go."

* * *

Tyson spat blood.

This was not a good thing.

Up in the observations booth, which was set into the wall perhaps five metres above the arena, Boris sighed, and reached for the microphone. "Tyson, I did tell you that there would be trouble if you continued to be so uncooperative," he remarked, his voice echoing through the stadium.

Tyson wiped his mouth on the back of his good hand, which shook. "Trouble? You call this trouble?" he called. "Weird, 'cause I call it a walk in the park."

"He needs antibiotics for that arm!" Brooklyn shouted. "You're killing him! If it gets any worse it'll have to be amputated!"

"I doubt that," Boris replied, coolly. "But you're right: it is approaching the stage at which it might become troublesome. Very well, then. Tyson, if you cooperate, we'll see that you get some proper medical treatment, how's that? We have EMTs and doctors among our staff. If you'll just work with us, then I'll stop withholding treatment and you'll feel much better in no time."

"I am not using your pathetic excuse for a blade and I'm _definitely_ not using it to fight my friend!" Tyson roared. Then he sat down, passed a hand across his face. He didn't feel too good. "Just give it up, you dickhead!" he shouted, a faint metallic whine rising and falling in his ears. They had Black Dragoon somewhere nearby, locked up in a heavily-insulated box in the observations booth: he could feel it, greasy as old clingfilm, smothering him like a plastic bag across the face. When he closed his eyes it was to see a bleached sepia skyscape, a dead brittle dome of air ready to crack apart with dark lightning. His clothes were rinsed through with static.

Brooklyn was at his side, hand on his shoulder; the contact earthed a sharp snapping spark into Tyson, who flinched. "It's just me," Brooklyn said, quietly, misunderstanding Tyson's reaction. "Tyson, you have to do what they tell you to do. Just this once. Please."

"Brooklyn, you will maintain your distance," came the voice over the loudspeakers.

"He's injured!" Brooklyn shouted up. "You cannot force him to blade as he is now! He needs medical treatment immediately!"

"You will maintain your distance or you will both be punished. Return to your position – oh, what is it now?"

The microphone cut out with a screech of static. Tyson looked up just in time to see Boris conversing with someone, and looking very angry. He stood up, snapped something at an assistant who stood nearby, and strode out of the operations booth. "Session adjourned," the assistant said into the microphone, in Japanese heavily accented with Russian. "Paramedics will assist you shortly, Granger-san."

"You can't keep doing this," Brooklyn was saying to Tyson, anxiously. "The moment you're incapacitated…oh, who knows what they'll do to you?"

"Wonder what got Boris so worked up? He looked pretty pissed," Tyson mused, ignoring Brooklyn. He felt like he was speaking through a large amount of very sticky toffee: for a moment, the entire world flickered yellow-grey, and he almost gagged on the thick scent of burning. Stupid no-good messed-up evil mutant bitbeast…

"I'm sure he'll be fine," Brooklyn said, dryly. "Can't say the same for you, though."

"Hey, whatever's bad for him is good for us, right?"

"Right, but –"

And that was when the alarms started to blare through the building. Red lights flickered on high above the arena, flashing madly. Brooklyn looked up, startled, one hand tightening on Tyson's shoulder, the other reaching instinctively for Zeus, which he had tucked into his pocket. For Tyson, the sudden raucous cacophony on top of the pain, dizziness and taint of electricity was altogether too much. "Oh, come _on_," he muttered, clenching his teeth. "Geez, I should have stayed in bed…"

"Oi, you two!" a guard called, jogging up to them with a pair of paramedics, to judge by the first aid kit they carried between them, close behind. "Emergency evacuation, effective as of now. We need to get you to the main arena. Come on, let's go."

"Why?" Brooklyn asked, very politely, as he helped Tyson to his feet.

"Doesn't concern you. Hell, doesn't concern me, apparently. Man, this job blows. And so does the pay." He grabbed Brooklyn's arm and started chivvying him and Tyson along, towards one of the side entrances to the arena. He swiped his ID card and motioned for the paramedics to go first, keeping a close hold on Brooklyn to prevent any chance of escape. Brooklyn, for his part, kept a close hold on Tyson to avoid any chance of him passing out.

The small passage was cramped, far too cramped for five people, and was unpleasantly filled with flat fluorescent lighting that stabbed at Tyson's eyes. However, the pressure of Black Dragoon lessened the further they went from the arena, and soon the ringing in his ears subsided, and he was able to breathe without choking on what tasted like acrid grey smoke. "I'm OK," he said to Brooklyn. "It's better now. Sheesh, let go already. You're cutting off the circulation in my arm."

"Hey, no talking, you two," the guard said, and added to Tyson, "As soon as we get you to the main arena we'll have a look at that arm, OK?"

"About time," Brooklyn said. "It could kill him."

"Sorry to hear that," the guard said, quite unconcernedly, though not entirely unkindly. "Sooner we get there, sooner your buddy gets better, right? Exactly. Move it."

And then out of nowhere, there came a gust of fresh air, a sudden bitter-bright tang of rain and wind and clean clear power. It filled Tyson up with shivering icy water, making his fingers tingle with electricity and lessening for a moment the slow thud of his headache.

_Dragoon_.

He must have gone pale, or staggered, or something, because Brooklyn said, "Can't you do something for him?"

"You keep your mouth shut," the guard said to him, but one of the paramedics had already set first aid case down on the floor and was starting to open it up. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"It's madness letting people walk around in the condition he's in," the paramedic said, pulling out a syringe and small vial of some clear serum. "He can't blade damaged. And you're important, aren't you? Granger?"

"Most important person I know," Tyson said, breathlessly. For now at least, the ache in his arm was muted, and he was quivering, abuzz with adrenaline. He felt as though he could have lit up a city powergrid with just a touch of his fingers; he felt as though he were made of thin paper, shielding and containing a great steely light. He could feel Dragoon as clearly as he could feel the smooth cement wall behind his back.

"Look, I'm aware that this is most likely just a drill, but if we're late they'll get pissed off, and I'm not getting myself in trouble just because some kid can't walk straight. Hit him over the head and carry him or something, but don't waste my time."

"I was told to examine him and get him fixed up," the paramedic said, taking Tyson's arm and starting to roll up the sleeve. "Boris' personal orders. Granger is important for this project. They pay you to shout and wave guns around, that's great. They pay me to make sure we don't end up with dead bodies."

The guard stared at the paramedic in disbelief for a moment, and then shrugged, clearly fed up. "Fine," he said. "Fine. You fix him up and you catch up to us as soon as you can. Or, wait, you know what? Do whatever the hell you want. If you're late for whatever goddamn drill they've got planned, it's your fault." He took hold of Brooklyn's arm again, started to hustle him down the passage while the other paramedic followed, head down, eyes dead ahead, not wanting trouble.

"Tyson!" Brooklyn called back. "I'll see you –"

"It's OK," Tyson called, turning his head to look away as the needle slid into his arm. "It's OK. It'll be alright."

Brooklyn rounded the corner with the guard and was gone. Tyson was already calculating what would happen, torn between choices: go after Brooklyn and help him out as soon as he had taken out this guy, or try to find Dragoon? Common sense said find Dragoon; Tyson said help out his friend. Always better to have company.

The paramedic was silent, bent over Tyson's arm, holding the syringe steady: Tyson could see only the top of his head, his dark hair. Tyson sized him up as best he could: short but well-built. Probably knew how to break bones as well as set them, if he was working for Boris; and although he had seemed fairly decent, Tyson knew better than to underestimate him just because he was a med guy and not some thug.

"You done sticking that in me?" he complained. He had a completely irrational fear of the needle breaking off inside his arm, and decided to wait until the injection was done before he did anything.

"Be quiet," the paramedic said, withdrawing the tip of the needle and bending down to reach into the first aid kit for bandages.

Tyson kicked out, hard, and caught him in the stomach. He fell over onto his side, coughing. Tyson kicked him again, breathing hard and gritting his teeth desperately, and then dropped to his knees, grabbing a fistful of the man's hair, getting a knee into the pit of his stomach and pressing down to prevent him from getting up. One strong purposeful hand thrust up towards Tyson's face, aiming for his eyes, and he leaned back, losing his hold on the man's hair.

The man forced Tyson off him and sat up, blue eyes darting wildly from side to side before he lurched towards the first aid kit, grabbed a heavy glass bottle, probably of disinfectant. Before Tyson could fully understand the situation, the bottle was zooming down towards his face through the air. He twisted wildly to the side, hearing the bottle break on stone, pushed himself up, threw himself headlong at the man. He wished he had a stick, a pipe, anything he could use as some kind of surrogate kendo bokken – but that wouldn't help, because kendo was an art, and this wasn't an art at all – it wasn't even self-defence, but a blatant attack, trying actively to injure another person, to cause someone else pain –

He felt the air currents whipping around them both as he drew back his fist and punched it directly into the man's face. He had broken noses before, had felt bone crunch under his knuckles when he'd taken down that guy who'd tried to dart him when he first got taken, felt it happen again now. There was a gasping red heat in his face, behind his eyes, a fever-warm fire-dry squeamishness as he punched again and again. On the fourth blow, the man sagged underneath him, fell still, breath whiffling in and out of his nose. His nostrils were gleaming dark with gathering blood.

Tyson stood up, his face flushed. He leaned against the wall for a moment, and did what he had avoided doing for as long as possible now – he looked down at his arm. It was swollen badly, and hot to the touch: mottled purple at the gaping mouth of the wide wound, with fine feathery red lines stretching up and up in a pale corona. Red lines were not a good thing, he recalled vaguely. He looked away, down at the man lying groaning incoherently on the floor; pressed his good hand against his forehead, ran his fingers through his hair, breathed out shakily. He felt sick and drained, as though his insides had been scooped out leaving the thin walls of his body to crisp and dry in the stinging air, red as a hand held in front of the sun.

Then felt cross with himself for being such an emo about it all. Ray would have done the same thing. Hilary would have done the same thing, and she wouldn't have worried about it afterwards. Girls were like that: they knew about having to fight, having to stop caring about everything except what was most important. Most importantly, Kai would have done the same thing. It was Boris who had started this, not Tyson, and Tyson was going to get out no matter the cost. That was how things worked, wasn't it? That was what you were supposed to do: yourself, your friends, and no one else. Anyone who hurt you hindered your chance of survival. That was what you had to learn here.

"Stupid crappy messed-up place," he spat, shaky with loathing as he glared at the walls. "I hate it here. I hate it. I hate what you bastards did to Kai and I hate what you're doing to Brooklyn and Oliver and me and everyone here. I hate it and I'm getting the hell out, you got that?"

No one answered him. There was no one to hear him. He stopped talking to himself and pulled his sleeve down over the wound in his arm so that he wouldn't have to see it and panic about it.

He should probably tie the man up – in point of fact, there were whole spools of bandages and sports tape in the first aid kit that would be ideal for the job – but he didn't have the strength or the stomach to do it. He turned away, set his face to the cool stream of bright wind that meant Dragoon was close by, and headed off to find Brooklyn.

* * *

"Are you sure it's supposed to do that?" Hilary wailed over the siren. "Oh, man, this was a really dumb plan."

"You think so?" Kenny squeaked, madly sarcastic. "You really think so, Hilary? Funny, because I was just thinking the same thing!"

"Take a chill pill, my little pals," Max said, swinging the chair around and collapsing elegantly into it. "Ah, awesome, I love these computer chairs." He twirled around on it, laughing. "Woohoo! Fully-guaranteed orthopaedic satisfaction."

"YOU ARE NOT HELPING THE SITUATION."

"Really?"

Kenny leaned his head against the wall. "You guys, we just set off a _fire alarm_. Without a fire."

"Yeah, I can kind of hear that."

"Well – well, there's a law against it! There has to be! There's a law against everything we do lately!"

Max clapped Kenny on the back (which almost resulted in his glasses being forever lost under the bank of closed-circuit television screens) and whirled around in his chair again. "Oi, Rope Squad! Status report!"

"All guards tied up, sir!" Ray called cheerfully. "And gagged."

"Unfortunately, we can't say the same for any of you," Kai muttered.

"Did anyone actually think about what we do after we get this far?" Kenny bawled. "We're in hostile territory and we don't even have a map!"

"Take it easy, Chief," Ray said, coming to stand next to Kenny, and peering up at the tiny array of screens. "Maxie, cut it out. Can you see Tyson on anywhere?"

"I don't think this place has access to all the video feed," Kenny babbled, nervously. "I mean, I'd assume there to be far more CCTV cameras in an establishment like this. I think this is just a small outpost, just this top level's security – it obviously goes down much deeper."

"OK, well, can we see anything else that might help?"

"I don't know – listen, people might start coming up here pretty soon, especially if this is the only exit –"

"They won't," Kai said, tapping a notice board that was crammed with sheets of Cyrillic – employee information. "Says here that if there's a fire warning, everyone is supposed to head for the main arena to be evacuated from there."

"How do you evacuate from the main arena?" Kenny demanded. "It's underground! That's insane!"

"I think he's right," Hilary said, pointing at the screens. "Look, this one's from, like, the top gallery thing – you can see down into the arena a bit there. There's loads of people there."

"OK, so we're safe up here for a while," Max said. "So now what? We could try and halt the evacuation until the police get here. That would be good, right? If we could trap everyone inside the arena, keep everything in one place?"

"Yeah, can't you do a lockdown?" Hilary agreed.

"Maybe – not from here, I don't think – well, I could try –"

Kai, staring at the tiny jittering screens, saw something that almost made his heart stop. "There," he said, and drew a shaky breath. "Right there."

Hilary's face lit up. "Tyson!" she squeaked, clapped her hands over her mouth in excitement. "Yes! Yes, he's OK!"

Onscreen, a figure, hunched and indistinct but instantly recognisable, could be seen creeping carefully down a corridor overlooking the arena. He turned once, looking over his shoulder, and then started to hurry. He passed quickly from that screen and blurred briefly across the next, and the next, before disappearing entirely.

"Chief, which cameras were those?" Ray asked. Kai was already at the door, Dranzer loaded. "Where is he?"

"I don't know. They're all surveillance from this floor, I think –"

"Kai, _wait_!" Ray shouted.

He was speaking to empty air.

* * *

The dizziness was coming back now. He knew that he had taken a wrong turn at some point while he had been trying to follow the most logical path to the main arena, still somehow determined to find Brooklyn. He had sacrificed desperately-needed medical attention in order to knock out a man who had been trying to help him, probably costing the guy his job at the very least in the process, and he was having a hard time justifying his actions if they hadn't been in the name of saving his friends.

He had absolutely no idea where he was now. The grey corridors stretched on and on, broken only occasionally by a dark door, some of which were labelled in kanji, others in Cyrillic, a few in a mixture of both, and most not at all. It was the lighting that was going to drive him crazy, endless dead lines of fluorescent wash that bleached everything hollow and ringing, that made his eyes water and blur – or else it would be the air, the empty tasteless air that didn't move and didn't function, that suffocated when it should replenish, starved when it should nourish. He had always hated air conditioning – pretty stupid pet hate to have in Japan, Kenny had pointed out – had always gotten edgy in waiting rooms and boardrooms and the kinds of gyms and exercise halls that were too clean and too perfect. If he wanted to Beyblade he would Beyblade in the dojo, with the smell of wood and varnish and Gramps' cooking all around him, and if he wanted to breathe he would breathe proper air.

_Like looking for colour on a blank page, for motion in death, for footholds in a sheer frictionless sheet of ice._

The corridors blurred in front of him. They had turned the alarms off, he noticed – he hadn't even thought about it, but now the silence was constricting, crippling. He didn't know where to go. He didn't even know what they used all these rooms for. Maybe this was where people slept, guards and med guys and techies and everyone. Personnel quarters, or whatever they were called. He didn't know and he didn't care. He found a short flight of stairs, stumbled down it, missing the last three steps and almost landing flat on his face.

Whenever he coughed, blood came up, which wasn't good. If his ribs had been hurting him, that would at least mean a break of some sort, which wasn't that bad apart from the risk of puncture and the pain; but they weren't sore at all, and he was not fond of the notion that he might have sustained internal bleeding during his battle with Brooklyn. Whatever the med guy had given him didn't seem to be doing anything much. Most likely some kind of antibiotic, although it could have been a tranquiliser for all he knew. It certainly hadn't been any kind of analgesic: the pain in his arm ebbed away and surged back in a random pattern of tides that left it almost impossible for him to stay on his feet. He was also extremely thirsty, and kept having to swallow, his throat feeling red and ragged.

"Man, this is stupid," he said aloud, leaning against the wall to huff momentarily. He needed a rest, but the odds were good that his escape had already been reported, and if he was going to rest it wasn't going to be slap bang in the middle of a goddamn corridor. He needed somewhere to hide at the very least, and then a way of getting out. He had abandoned any daring rescue plans a while ago. His planned course of action currently went something along the lines of _get out, get the police, get help_. If that came to nothing, he could at least try and find a telephone before they caught him again. "Come on," he said, forcing himself away from the wall. "Come _on_. What the hell's your problem? Cry baby."

_**I am here**_**.**

"What?" Tyson muttered, clutching his bad arm against his side and pushing onwards. "What? Great, hearing things. Woo."

_**I am here, close to you**_**.**

"Wait, what?" Tyson yelped, spinning around wildly and staring up and down the corridor, snapped out of his stupor by the sheer shock. "Uh. Oh. Um." He winced, aware that he was going to look pretty stupid if it turned out he was just imagining this. "Dragoon?" he said, tentatively.

_**All four of us are here**_**.**

"Where, damn it? And how come?"

_**We are in this together. Keep going as you are now.**_

"How'd you get here?" Tyson yelled. "Hello? Ah, come on, dude, give me a break! How did you get here?"

But he knew that Dragoon had said all that was going to be said. He realised that he had stopped walking, and also that the pain in his arm had cleared; he took the opportunity while it lasted, and hurried onwards. Bitbeasts were probably worth listening to, although it might help if they gave a little more information. The air was suddenly richer, though: rougher, harsher, cleaner, far better than fake recycled breath. He felt a breeze tug at his fingertips, whistle down the passageway, nudge him in the right direction.

"Cool," he said, making his voice sound as loud as he could, setting it against the pressing walls like a weapon. "I always did like you, Dragoon old pal. Unless that was a hallucination. Which would be weird."

But the shell of cement, the swallowing throat, the hard hands of the earth pressing down on you: to iron your lungs flat, to buckle your ribs, to fold the bones of your jaw in half lengthwise like a paper plate: to crumble your skull into the ground and turn your blood into mud. He was seeing bad things now whenever he closed his eyes, bad stupid claustrophobic things. He breathed in deeply, wished for someone else to be there with him, although then it would mean two people in trouble. He just needed someone to talk to. On the topic of company, _all four _of them were here? All four sacred spirits?

He had looked down at Kai, heavy and still and lifeless on the pavement, and he had reached down and taken his hand, rough and square and steady, and he had almost dared to kiss that hand, almost and not quite. Dragoon had fallen nearby, and Kai would have picked it up – he had to have, he _had _to have –

_Kai, if you're here – _

Even though his heart clenched at the thought, Tyson didn't know whether he would be happy or angry to see Kai: not here, not in this grey place, not here under the ice, not again.

He kept going, following the air, following the warm faint tingle of natural electricity that he sensed from somewhere. He was growing dizzy again, so dizzy that he could barely breathe. He was staring at a white snowfield, every breath rasping black against his throat. He wasn't inside of his head anymore: he had been squeezed out of his body, been pushed away. The streaks of light that spiralled across his vision fizzed and crackled, charged with pure incandescent power, and for a moment he could almost believe that he had found his way out of the grey place: that someone had taken his hand and pulled him up, into a place where he could watch stars and planets turn and swing, and see the glitter of a thousand thousand far-away fires reflected on bright water as it passed over that face, those eyes…

He slumped against the wall. Just a minute's rest would be enough. Every breath was so cold that it sliced his lungs like a knife, but it was real pain, sharp with adrenaline and salty with blood, instead of the ceaseless, stale ache that had crippled him for so long.

After some length of time – although whether it really was only a minute, or closer to an hour, or a year, he didn't know – something made him look up. Afterwards he recalled it as a touch to the depths of his mind: a chord struck somewhere deep inside, a dissonance resolving. Kai was standing in front of him, not five metres away – it _was_ Kai, it was, and Tyson knew because he was frowning –

_- the wall, the mystery, the thing keeping him out, the thing keeping him away: the sorrow, the loss, the hollow place underneath the ice, the hollow place behind the ribs, behind the bone-cage: the emptiness where the heart once was –_

- and then anxious hands were grasping him by the shoulders, cupping his face roughly, forcing him to look up; and a voice was saying, "Tyson! _Tyson!_"

Tyson grinned tiredly. "Long time no see, bro," he said. "Five more minutes?" He pushed the hands away and, by dint of clinging to the wall, managed to stand up. He wobbled, swayed, and crumpled. Arms caught him and cradled him, held him tight. He blinked. This person smelled like Kai. That was weird. No one in the world smelled like Kai except Kai.

"Why," he said, muffledly, his face pressed against a huge puffy anorak, "do you smell like Kai?"

"We have to hurry," said the same voice as before. "Can you walk?"

Tyson was aware of a vague ringing emptiness, and then a flight of steps, and then a journey back down into the cold darkness, back into the stale static grey place. So. They must have found him. They were taking him back. Of course. They always win. Back into the greyness. He'd been thinking something nice, hadn't he? A nice dream, about Kai. It was so annoying when you forgot dreams –

There was a sudden horrible pain and he jerked awake. "Owwww!" he complained, gasping. "What'd you have to do that for? Can't a guy get any sleep around here?"

Kai said, in a very odd voice, "What did they _do_ to you? You need antibiotics immediately, this looks infected. Hold still."

Tyson said, in an equally odd voice, "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Rescuing you, Einstein," Kai answered, and started unwinding his scarf. "Surprise."

* * *

it is 7 AM and I haven't slept yet. yay. thanks for reading, kids, you are all sexyfine and i love you loads. :)


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